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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



COLOURS OF WAR 



COLOURS OF WAR 



BY 

ROBERT CROZIER LONG 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCMBNER'S SONS 

1915 






Copyright, 1915, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published November, 1915 




NOV 27 1915 
'CLA414791 



TO 

T. L. 



PREFACE 

THIS book is the material of a picture, 
not a picture. When watched from far, 
war appears as a quarrel, a few battles, 
and some manifestations of human nature. It 
is easily grasped and painted. Books on war 
written at a distance have unity. 

Seen from very near, the outlines get rough ; 
details expand, spoiling the great features ; and 
the colours dissolve into blotches. A picture 
might best represent what happens in war; 
colours in confusion on a palette best convey 
what is seen. 

Some of the matter here appeared in the 
London Westminster Gazette and the London 
Fortnightly Review; some in American jour- 
nals ; but the book is not a reprint of articles. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter p AGE 

I. Germany 1 

II. Lost Russians 26 

III. Work 49 

IV. Messiah 76 

V. Warsaw 100 

VI. Hindenburg's Rink .... 125 

VII. The Front of Cracow . . . 142 

VIII. Galician Catastrophes . . . 169 

IX. Arms and Men 199 

X. Finis Poloniae 224 

XI. Transport 242 

XII. Soldiers 266 

XIII. Ultima Ratio 287 



COLOURS OF WAR 

CHAPTER I 
GERMANY 

I AST memories seldom match first mem- 
j ories. On 7th August, a week after 
Germany went to war, I reached Hol- 
land from Berlin. At a station near the frontier 
were the station-master, a sentry, and a boy. 
Soldiers in uniform, reservists still in civil 
dress, and policemen had swarmed in the sta- 
tions to the east. The boy, who was pale and 
dirty as few Prussians are, wore a helmet and 
he swung a toy sword far too long. He watched, 
with sleepy eyes; and he sang, provocatively, 
as if he knew who was in the train, the "Watch 
on the Rhine," Fest steht und treul Fourteen 
years before, I entered Germany by another 
frontier. School children, welcoming at the sta- 
tion a Hohenzollern prince, sang the "Watch 
on the Rhine." The children were small; half 
of them were girls; and the warlike music 

seemed incongruous. After that I never heard 

l 



2 COLOURS OF WAR 

children singing war-songs. Now, even with 
battles and sieges almost within hearing, there 
was something incongruous in the boy, his mar- 
tial squeak, and the sword as long as himself. 

Some people were thrown out of Prussia. We 
went with songs. The platform at Hanover 
was occupied by soldiers of the reserve, tired 
and dusty men, who might have walked all 
night. In came the train with the missions of 
England and Belgium. The reservists demon- 
strated with the "Watch on the Rhine"; and 
some menaced. After that there was singing 
all the way. Soldiers sang out of passing trains. 
Reservists, laden with parcels, sang as they filed 
into the stations; and children joined in. At 
Wuntsdorf, drawn up as soldiers, Red Cross 
nurses waved flags, and welcomed us, waiting 
for our songs. The English enemies, and the 
Belgians, stared. A conductor got out of the 
train; a whisper went round; and the nurses 
began to sing. They sang " Deutschland, 
Deutschland iiber Alles" to the hymn music 
of Haydn; when they reached the end "Flour- 
ish, German Fatherland!" they began again; 
they sang three times, mechanically in soldier 
fashion; and in the same soldier fashion they 
sang the "Watch on the Rhine." The nurses 
kept order; none threatened; but their faces 



GERMANY 3 

were spiteful and pained; and as the train 
moved they waved us ironically away. When 
we stopped in the night, the silence was broken 
by singing in the distance; by disciplined shouts 
that the Watch on the Rhine stood fast and 
true; and that Germany is over everything on 
earth. 

This singing at night was the first thing that 
gave colour to the war. Things had gone too 
fast for colouring. Before Wednesday the 29th 
July the crisis was not understood. After the 
mobilisation in four military districts of Russia, 
clear-headed men expected war; but it needed 
news of frontier skirmishes and air raids, pub- 
lished before the result of the Ultimatum was 
known, to convince the public that war had 
come. On Friday, the Emperor moved from 
Potsdam to Berlin. Martial law was pro- 
claimed. Many foreigners first heard of it 
when they used their own languages in telephone 
conversations. Only German might be spoken. 
In the afternoon white martial law posters ap- 
peared. They appealed for order, and prom- 
ised a mild administration. Notices in the Post 
Offices regulated correspondence. For frontier 
provinces only open letters in German were 
passed. Beyond this, my corner of Berlin 
showed no sign of war. 



4 COLOURS OF WAR 

In the centre there were no demonstrations. 
Men stared at the Russian Embassy in Unter 
den Linden. The French and British Em- 
bassies attracted no attention. In the east of 
Unter den Linden near the Palace, on the Pal- 
ace Bridge, in the Lustgarten, and in the square 
north of the Palace, a crowd waited. People 
were quiet; they read the afternoon editions; 
and except for an attempt, which led to nothing, 
to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles," 
they were silent. At six o'clock an officer came 
to a window of the Kaiser's rooms, and said 
that the Kaiser would speak. The Kaiser with 
the Empress and his sons Adalbert and Oscar 
walked on to the balcony. 

I saw him for the first time since trouble be- 
gan. He was yellow, but erect and calm; he 
wore the grey-green uniform and the spiked 
helmet covered with uniform cloth which in 
the next days were seen everywhere. He spoke 
without emphasis, very low, and I heard noth- 
ing but the beginning: "A heavy storm . . ." 
and the sentence, "They have thrust a sword 
into my hand" — "Man driickt mir das Schwert 
in die Hand." The Kaiser said that the envy of 
neighbours had made war imminent; that war 
would cost the people much blood and goods; 
and that the foe would learn what it was to 



GERMANY 5 

attack Germany. He told the people to go to 
the churches and pray for the army. Later 
he drove down Unter den Linden in a yellow 
motor-car. The crowd cheered, and the trum- 
peting which clears a path in peace time failed. 
Next day the Kaiser's movements were ham- 
pered by crowds; and the Biirgermeister asked 
that the demonstrations should cease. 

On Friday, the German Government in- 
structed the Ambassador at St. Petersburg to 
say that if Russia within twelve hours did not 
cease preparations for war, Germany would 
mobilise. France was asked to say within 
eighteen hours what she would do in case of 
war between Germany and Russia. On Satur- 
day, the Declaration of War to Russia was not 
known. The Foreign Office had no information. 
Communication with St. Petersburg ceased. 
The Russian Ambassador, M. Sverbeyeff, told 
me he had not been at the Foreign Office since 
Friday morning. There had been a demon- 
stration; members of the Embassy feared to go 
out. I told them that good order was kept. 
Events proved them to be right; they were at- 
tacked as they started from Berlin. 

At a quarter to six, when I left the Embassy, 
Unter den Linden was crowded. A civilian pro- 
claimed from the top of a motor-cab that war 



6 COLOURS OF WAR 

had begun. The crowd cheered. The speaker 
was a member of the Reichstag. War had 
been declared at St. Petersburg on the preced- 
ing midnight. This evening red posters flamed 
on the pillars. The posters gave the order of 
the first days of mobilisation; and ended, "and 
so on," leaving the duration of mobilisation in 
doubt. The Kaiser again spoke from the Pal- 
ace. He said that he forgave those who had 
spoken ill of him; and that he knew no parties, 
only Germans. 

From this day Berlin felt the social and 
economic reaction of war. The city was cut off; 
the train service ceased; no foreign letters were 
delivered, and few German. In some places the 
issue of internal money orders was suspended. 
Letters from West Europe were delayed at 
Cologne; money from abroad could not be had. 
Foreign cheques had no exchange. Speculating 
bankers paid three-quarters of the peace value; 
and booked the balance. The run on Savings- 
Banks and on banks for gold soon ceased; but 
little gold could be had. Mobilisation carried 
off workmen. The City Railway, the Under- 
ground, and the tramways shortened their ser- 
vices. Women trained as conductors, and con- 
ductors too old to fight learned to drive. Motor- 
cabs and horse-cabs disappeared. They were 



GERMANY 7 

mobilised as men were. When a motor-cab's 
hour came, it made for the Templehof Field in 
South Berlin. There, cabs were massed in 
companies, taught to advance, to retreat, to 
thread their ways in curves like manoeuvring 
war-ships. Drivers took fares up to the last 
minute. The order was good. 

The demeanour of the people was confident 
but depressed. I heard some cheering, and in 
cafes much singing; but there were many 
anxious faces. In German acquaintances I 
found dread of the coming sorrows and losses. 
There was no newspaper sensationalism. The 
reports of frontier fighting were reserved; the 
first report said, "We lost two wounded; en- 
emy's loss unknown." Most wars begin with 
paper victories. The public's nerves were 
strained. On Saturday the story spread that 
the Crown Prince had been murdered by two 
Russians. A citizen with a reputation for 
truthfulness described the deed, as he saw it; 
such is war psychosis. 

Nervousness grew; and many lost their 
heads. The Ministry of War asked the people 
to look for spies and to prevent attempts against 
railways and telegraphs. Railway carriages 
were posted with warnings. The public set it- 
self to help. Russians drew suspicion; later 



8 COLOURS OF WAR 

other foreigners were watched; and at last Ger- 
mans. Sharp-eyed men seized an officer who 
wore with a faded tunic suspiciously new 
trousers; and, sure that he was a Frenchman 
supposed to have poisoned wells at Metz, 
dragged him to the police. In peace time the 
officer would have slashed his assailants' faces. 
A builder's cashier who had himself chased spies 
in Wilmersdorf drew suspicion. He protested. 
His accent proved he was a Dresdener. Spies, 
said the spy-chasers, always speak fluent Ger- 
man. The spy-chasers searched, and found no 
money. This proved he was a spy. They con- 
tinued to search, and unearthed small notes. 
The notes, the crowd reasoned, were bribes for 
soldiers. An American journalist was seized at 
Gumbinnen. He appeared in the newspapers 
as a Russian Grand Duke. Patriots of South 
Germany searched for an imaginary automobile 
which carried from France to the Russian Treas- 
ury five million pounds in gold. 

Trouble was threatened by the food question. 
There was food for a fortnight, and freight traf- 
fic ceased. Prices rose, and attempts were made 
to exploit need. Housekeepers were frightened 
into paying a mark a pound for flour. Such 
cases were few. The Commandant in the Mark, 
General v. Kessel, fixed maximum prices of 30, 



GERMANY 9 

27, and 20 pfennings for wheaten flour, rye 
flour, and salt. The timidity and selfishness of 
citizens who had no notion of war took forms 
of humour. Someone asked the Foreign Office 
whether war could be postponed — he wanted 
to search Leipzig. A druggist's sufferings were 
real. He sold an elixir for making artificial 
sunburn. In the week of crisis pillars glowed 
with puffs of the bottled sunshine. The soldiers 
with martial law proclamations covered the 
posters up. The druggist, saying that he had se- 
crets, gained admittance to Kessel, and begged 
the general to make his bill-posters take the 
proclamations down. Under Nationalist agita- 
tion, sign-boards and notices in French, after- 
wards in English, were removed. A "Cafe 
Frangais" was among them. The sign-board 
was sold as old wood; the buyer, a joiner, who 
knew no French, pleased by the decorative let- 
ters, set it in his garden, and caused a local war. 
After the first days, the mobilisation was 
seen. Through the streets in fours, in civilian 
dress, without arms, marched men of the re- 
serve and Landwehr. All carried brown card- 
board boxes of the kind used by tailors' packers. 
These were town reservists, not very strong, 
puffy and dull-eyed; warlike only by their 
tramp and the zeal in their songs. Women 



10 COLOURS OF WAR 

and children walked beside them, and showed 
no feeling. The cheers were weak. There was 
no hilarity, sporting war spirit, or no drunken- 
ness. The reservist columns stopped traffic, 
wound into barrack yards, and came out in 
uniform, mixed with active soldiers. The ac- 
tive soldiers were brighter and stronger. The 
physical gains of soldiering quickly pass. 

The spirit was good. All who had to serve, 
and all who could serve, rushed to serve. The 
old men, women, and children were proud when 
their kinsmen left. At the declaration of war a 
student whom I knew, an untrained member of 
the replacement reserve, was sailing on Lake 
Constance. His parents and sister dreaded that 
he would come late, and be disgraced; at his 
return they showed more joy than if he had 
come safe from battle. I heard that a Land- 
sturm man, not called up, offered to personate a 
friend in the Landwehr whose family conditions 
made service a hardship. The offer was not 
taken. I heard, too, of a deserter who returned 
from France when the negotiations looked 
dangerous. He had run away through hatred 
of army life. He refused to report to the War 
Office, and take advantage of amnesty, because 
if war were avoided he would have to complete 
his term. He was a weak man, ready to help 



GERMANY 11 

his country in war, but not in peace. The of- 
ficers behaved well. I saw many, in field uni- 
form with the cloth cap which did not always 
hide the helmet spike. Their conduct was a re- 
proach to some civilians, who mishandled en- 
emy subjects. The newspapers condemned these 
outbreaks. 

In the first days there was a rush to the 
churches. For marriages of soldiers formalities 
were relaxed. Before I left Berlin there were 
some thousands of war weddings. Outside a 
church in southwest Berlin, couples waited in 
queues. There were soldiers in uniform; reserv- 
ists in civil dress with bandboxes; girls by 
themselves keeping places for bridegrooms who 
came late; and bridegrooms waiting for brides. 
Some brides were rich girls; some, servants with 
red arms, straight from work. In this way 
were wed the Kaiser's sons, Adalbert and Oscar; 
and Moltkes, Biilows, Bluchers, Delbriicks, and 
Siemenses. With some the God of War dealt 
hardly. An officer found on reaching Berlin 
that his betrothed had gone to Chemnitz, his 
garrison town. The trains passed; the officer, 
unwed, left for the front. In a church of Tel- 
tow, a bride fell dead as the wedding-ring was 
put on her finger. The soldier bridegroom sa- 
luted, and walked out of the church. 



12 COLOURS OF WAR 

In politics I was struck by the indifference to 
England. The question which seemed most im- 
portant, whether England would support Russia 
and France, caused no debate. Perhaps news- 
papers were asked not to raise it. I believe the 
first article in a Berlin newspaper appeared on 
Tuesday morning; it was written by Count 
Reventlow, who predicted that England would 
join Germany's foes, and said that it mattered 
little. More than three days before English and 
German publics knew, I was told by a German 
official that we were in the war. The story 
casts light on diplomatic history. . 

On Saturday, not aware that Germany and 
Russia were formally at war, I called on the Di- 
rector of the English Department of the Foreign 
Ministry. I did not know this official; I knew 
that he was working with the Chancellor on the 
negotiations with England; that he knew Eng- 
land well; and that he had friendly relations 
with Englishmen. Without telling me that a 
declaration had been delivered to Russia at mid- 
night, he spoke as if war between Russia and 
Germany was a fact; and he said that England 
was on the side of Russia. Germany could do 
nothing to prevent this. I asked whether he 
was speaking of accomplished facts, or fore- 
casting the future on the basis of present con- 



GERMANY 13 

ditions. He repeated that England was in the 
war, and said he was sorry. What I heard 
later in other quarters convinced me that our 
Government had come to no decision; or that 
if it had, it had not let Germany know. On 
Sunday, hoping to clear up the mystery, I 
again called. It was still two and a half days 
before our Ultimatum. This time the same of- 
ficial told me without doubt that England was 
in the war. It was all over; nothing could be 
done; and no purpose would be served by dis- 
cussion. I showed him a Berlin morning paper 
with quotations from a London newspaper 
which is looked on by Germans as the organ of 
the Foreign Office. The London newspaper 
made clear that no decision had been come to; 
it implied, if anything, that England would 
keep out. The Director of the English Depart- 
ment refused to read this; he made a gesture 
which suggested surprise that any one should 
consider England's participation an open ques- 
tion, and said, "It's no use. It's all over." I 
assumed that negotiations with England had 
ceased. I asked when our Embassy would 
leave. Could newspaper correspondents leave 
with it? They could, I was told, if the Em- 
bassy consented. At the Embassy I heard 
that there was no question of leaving. Nego- 



14 COLOURS OF WAR 

tiations were proceeding amicably; and the 
statement of the Foreign Office caused surprise. 
I learned next morning that a colleague, who 
visited the same official two days before the 
Ultimatum, was told the same story. The 
incident made a stir; I believe it provoked a 
protest from our Embassy. The motive of the 
Foreign Office remained a puzzle. After our 
declaration of war the reason, though not the 
motive, became plain. While the negotiations 
for our neutrality proceeded, the higher officials 
of the German Foreign Office must have known 
that England would intervene. They knew 
that their army was to march through Belgium; 
and that this, independently of other causes, 
meant war with England. Probably the Gov- 
ernment was influenced into accepting the 
Staff's plan by the belief that, Belgium or no 
Belgium, it would face to fight England. It can 
hardly be doubted that a Government so well 
informed as the German knew more than the 
British public knew of Anglo-French and Anglo- 
Russian negotiations. After war between Ger- 
many and the Dual Alliance began, the for- 
mality of negotiation with England had to be 
observed; otherwise the plan to march through 
Belgium would be revealed. Germany was able 
to prepare for certain action against us at sea, 



GERMANY 15 

at a time when our mind was not made up. 
The incautiousness of the Foreign Office offi- 
cial might have upset this calculation; a sharp 
thinker might have guessed that the violation 
of Belgian neutrality, the certain cause of 
British intervention, had been decided on be- 
yond recall. 

At the beginning of the crisis British residents 
prepared to leave Berlin. Few got away. The 
last train for Flushing left at midday on Mon- 
day. Early in the morning I found at the 
Zoological Garden station, the nearest station 
to the British quarter, about a hundred British 
subjects. They had enough luggage to fill ten 
vans. The train had one van. At the central 
Friedrichstrasse station conditions were the 
same. Refugees who made for the Silesian 
terminal station saved themselves and their 
property. At the other stations, mountains of 
trunks, with the belongings of British govern- 
esses and music students, were left behind. 

On Tuesday morning public buildings were 
guarded. The police feared bombs. The cen- 
tral telegraph office in Franzosischestrasse was 
closed. In other offices telegrams for England 
were refused; later, telegrams in German were 
taken; later we heard that England was re- 
jecting telegrams in German. At one o'clock 



16 COLOURS OF WAR 

the Reichstag met in the Palace to hear the 
Emperor's Speech from the Throne. The So- 
cialists stayed away. At three I went to the 
sitting in the Reichstag building in Konigs- 
platz. The sitting lasted till six. The Chan- 
cellor spoke for half an hour. The Reichstag 
unanimously voted a War Credit of two hun- 
dred and fifty million pounds. Other war laws 
passed. These legalised maximum prices and 
compulsion to sell; provided for the support of 
soldiers' families; for securing the solvency of 
Sick Insurance Bureaux; for amendment of the 
Imperial Debt Law. The Chancellor thanked 
the Reichstag; the Reichstag cheered for Em- 
peror and Fatherland, and adjourned. 

The sitting showed that the Social-Demo- 
cratic party supported the Government; and 
that Belgium had been chosen as the path of 
attack on France. The invasion of Belgium, 
the Chancellor said, was a breach of interna- 
tional law; he said that France had planned to 
invade by Belgium; and he pleaded necessity. 
Feeling that war with England was near, I 
watched the members. I judged that they did 
not see that England was in the war, or did not 
measure the seriousness of the fact. The policy 
of the Socialists was foreseen. Before the war, 
the party newspaper Vorwdrts condemned Aus- 



GERMANY 17 

trian policy towards Servia; preached that 
Germany must bring Austria to reason, and 
that she need not support an obstinate ally. 
This policy offended Socialists, with whom pa- 
triotism had begun to melt cosmopolitan ice. 
The Russian Wing, the extreme Left, composed 
partly of Russian exiles, hated Russia. After 
Russia mobilised, the Vorwdrts wrote against 
Tsarism. On Tuesday morning the Socialist 
deputy, Dr. Siidekum, told me that the party 
was united; an hour later the spokesman, Dr. 
Haase, pronounced for the War Credit. He 
said that the party was not responsible for pol- 
icy; it worked with French comrades for peace; 
the defence of the Fatherland was now the only 
question; Social-Democratic Internationalism 
upheld state independence; and the Socialists 
would not leave the Fatherland in the lurch. 
The party was against a war of conquest; it 
required peace whenever the enemy was ready. 
This, the only speech, was cheered by all parties. 
In the Socialist party outside the Reichstag 
there was a patriotic reaction. Some members 
who had served in the army asked for admis- 
sion into the monarchical, anti-Socialist Veter- 
ans' Unions, called by the Kaiser his army in 
mufti. This caused no surprise to students of 
politics and human nature, who knew how thin 



18 COLOURS OF WAR 

lies the new soil of Internationalism over the 
stone of race. 

This evening I went to the office of the Tele- 
graph Agencies in Zimmerstrasse to see the 
statement on British policy made to the House 
of Commons on Monday night. All the after- 
noon the speech came in in sections; the mid- 
day papers had none of it; and the short extract 
in a morning paper did not give the sense. On 
leaving the agencies' building, I found bulletins 
of the Berliner Tageblatt with the news that our 
Ambassador had asked for his passports. I 
went by Wilhelmstrasse to the Embassy. The 
house was under siege. The crowd, mostly 
well-dressed citizens of the doubtful Friedrich- 
stadt class, stretched far south in Wilhelm- 
strasse, and on the north overflowed into Unter 
den Linden. Demonstrators hunted a cab 
which had left the Embassy. Three policemen, 
too few to disperse the crowd, rode up and 
down. A dozen men were at work. They 
hoisted one another to the window-ledges. The 
windows were broken with sticks or stones. I 
did not risk entering the Embassy. A Spanish 
diplomatist who left later was mistaken for our 
Ambassador, threatened, and forced to take 
refuge in a hotel. 

While this siege was under way the police 



GERMANY 19 

raided English dwellings. They arrested Eng- 
lishmen, often with the ceremony which in peace 
time is enjoyed by native Germans. English- 
men while under arrest were threatened by a 
crowd; the police drew revolvers on the crowd. 
Policemen entered the Hotel Adlon; called out 
the names of English newspaper correspondents 
and of an American who represented English 
newspapers, and carried the correspondents off. 
The charge against one was that he knew me. 
The police lost their heads. They arrested a 
German lady, wife of an officer at the front, 
whose daughter is married to an Englishman. 
At night a hundred British subjects were at the 
Police Presidency. They were given licences; 
and told to report themselves every three days. 
Later, the report system became stricter. Some 
Britons were sent to Spandau Citadel, the home 
of the War Treasure. I believe they were re- 
leased. On returning to my apartment after I 
had closed it, I found a detective outside the 
door. He did not recognise me; and told me 
politely that I had left Berlin. 

In society discourtesy was not shown. Friend- 
ships and business relations withstood the po- 
litical storm. Germans known to me offered 
to take into their house an English lady who 
feared she could not get away in time. A serv- 



20 COLOURS OF WAR 

ant who had taken an affection to this lady's 
child was willing to face any misfortune sooner 
than be parted from it; and went with the 
family in conditions of discomfort and danger 
over half of Europe. The hall porter of my 
house, who knew that foreigners had trouble to 
get money, refused to take payment for work 
done. There were cases of less agreeable kind; 
but the mob law and newspaper law which gov- 
ern the fate of enemy subjects in some countries 
were not supreme. 

In these days there was not much bitterness 
against England. France was ignored or painted 
as Russia's dupe. Enmity was against Russia; 
politicians, newspapers, and citizens held that 
Russia by mobilising had provoked war. When 
England declared war many newspapers ex- 
pressed relief. Weeks passed before there was 
any understanding of England's part. Ger- 
mans knew that with Austria-Hungary's help 
they could defeat the Dual Alliance. They 
foresaw the influence on trade and overseas 
supplies of England's intervention. They cared 
little for the naval threat against their colonies, 
because success in Europe would bring all the 
colonies they needed. The relief was due to the 
conviction that some day England and Germany 
would fight. A fight against England only 



GERMANY 21 

meant the loss of colonies, and no gains. It 
meant defeat. A fight against England and the 
Dual Alliance would be determined by armies; 
and no doubt was felt that the German army 
would win. Most Germans believed, with the 
Chancellor, that England would send at most a 
few divisions. They had a clearer knowledge of 
the politics of war, of its material and moral 
dimensions, than any of their enemies; but they 
under-measured us here. The blunder would 
have caused their defeat had we not under- 
measured them and over-measured our allies. 

In so far as it concerns their duty to their 
own country the conduct of Germans was credit- 
able. Their bearing showed the merits of drill, 
of authority, of class, professional, and academic 
codes of honour. In the sovereign, ministers, 
and generals confidence was felt. The nation, 
not only the army, was ready. From many 
statements to the Reichstag, and to the Reich- 
stag Budget Committee, the nation knew the 
measure of its personal and financial respon- 
sibilities in armaments and policy. The obliga- 
tions of the alliance with Austria were known; 
and in 1913 and 1914 the Legislature was told 
with precision of the military and diplomatic 
combinations which Germany expected to face. 
Appeals to the electorate before the expiry of 



22 COLOURS OF WAR 

Reichstag terms were all on the question whether 
the people would pay for the armaments which 
the empire's policy made necessary; the policy 
was plainly put to the nation, and the policy 
was approved. These gave the Germans a 
moral preparation for war which could not be 
expected in countries where armaments and 
policy are independent: the first, as an easy 
thing, public; the second secret, in the hands of 
infallible men. 

In the great danger which Germany faced, 
indifference could not be conceived. For shirk- 
ers and cowards was the vicious military system 
which requires all men equally to defend their 
country. Dissension did not hinder military 
concentration. Before the war there were dif- 
ferences of economical and political kind; Social- 
ism was strong; some were discontented with 
the Constitution because they wanted an in- 
crease of the state's power; others wanted par- 
liamentary administration. These differences, 
except that they inspired less violence, were 
similar to the political differences of other 
countries. The effectiveness of the state in 
battle was not impaired by them; no foreign 
condition pleased any party better; the friends 
of a strong state did not want Russia's way; 
and the friends of parliamentarism did not want 



GERMANY 23 

freedom corrupted into anarchy. Fortunate 
in not having to improvise armaments, the 
empire was fortunate again in not having to 
improvise unity. Englishmen who knew Ger- 
many agreed with me that we had a foe as for- 
midable as our alarmist school preached, though 
not always formidable in the way it preached. 
They considered that Germany could be beaten 
only by well-prepared states with all material 
and moral resources under control of com- 
petent chiefs. It is unlucky that on this mat- 
ter England was misled; that she was told of a 
Germany rent by Socialism and Particularism, 
undermined by corruption, and ruled by luna- 
tics. It was natural that our ministers should 
know nothing; and excusable that ambitious 
men who have never been in Germany should 
make public their knowledge of German dis- 
sension, corruption, and lunacy. It was pain- 
ful that men who knew the truth, and might 
usefully have warned, joined in the deception. 
Their excuse that the public wanted falsehood 
may have been true; they took their cue from 
above. I told the facts to a minister whom I 
found convinced that Germans were panting to 
help England to defeat their generals. He said 
that the Government knew its business; and 
that we were not fighting the German nation. 



24 COLOURS OF WAR 

This was a Christian plan, but not pregnant 
with victory, as there was no shadow of doubt 
that the German nation was fighting us. 

Relations with the police were so bad that 
newspaper correspondents, and others, due to 
leave with the Embassy spent Wednesday night 
at the Embassy house. Next morning soon 
after eight, the British Ambassador, the Min- 
ister of Belgium, the staffs of both missions, 
and a dozen correspondents of newspapers left 
from the Lehrter station. Measures were taken 
against demonstrations. Near the Embassy 
house passes were required, and policemen 
lined the road. The members of the Embassy 
drove by by-streets. A colonel of guards was 
in charge of the train; there were many of- 
ficials and agents; and no undue delicacy 
was shown in foiling diplomatic designs feared 
against bridges. At the Elbe, windows were 
closed; once, the blinds were drawn. Armed 
men in civilian dress guarded the stations, 
bridges, and culverts. On the roads, trains of 
motor-cars carried military loads. At Doeberitz 
station, in heaps, lay aeroplane frames without 
motors or wings. They looked like rocs' skele- 
tons. Trains with reservists passed, mostly 
going east. 

The journey was slow. In the sunshine and 



GERMANY 25 

in the country the mood of Berlin passed; and 
only the war-songs brought thoughts of the 
darkness of war. The reservists smiled and 
cheered. The trains themselves seemed re- 
lieved. In Prussia, in peace time, only the 
bravest profane a railway; but war fostered 
liberty: the trains were flying forests, flying 
picture-galleries and treasuries of wit. Linden 
branches stuck from the windows; on the doors 
were drawn caricatures of Germany's foes; and 
"To Paris," "To Moscow," "To London," ex- 
pressed the soldiers' faith. A scholar of Schon- 
hausen had written in Cyrillic letters on a 
derelict engine, "Father Nicholas," meaning 
the Tsar; and on a water-tower — as if they 
needed remembrance — were the martial notes 
which open the "Watch on the Rhine." 



CHAPTER II 
LOST RUSSIANS 

IN August, Russia began in London, stretched 
across the North Sea, Norway, Sweden, 
and Finland. Countless Russians — per- 
haps half a million — were in Central and West 
Europe; many were lost, and rewards were 
paid for rinding them. Some were Jews, sick 
or corpulent, forbidden to profane home spas. 
Such Jews haunt Karlsbad, Vichy, Kissingen. 
Land communications ceased. The path home 
was to Stockholm, thence by alternative ways, 
painful to Russians and terrible to Jews. 
Steamers went to a Finnish port, and trains 
nearly to the Arctic Circle, round the Gulf of 
Bothnia, and south to Russia. The journey 
was long; and travellers new to Russia and 
Jewry learned both. This was so until Christ- 
mas, when all lost Russians were found. 

In peace it took two days to reach St. Peters- 
burg. It took nine days in war. Stockholm 
was four days from London. Abo, the peace 

port of Finland, was closed; Hango was blown 

26 



LOST RUSSIANS 27 

up. Steamers, Swedish and Finnish, went to 
Raumo. Before the war, no one knew of Raumo. 
It is a little town, with small wharfage, joined 
by a private railway to the railways of the 
Finnish State. From Raumo to St. Petersburg 
took a day, sometimes more; it depended on 
troop movements. Refugees who feared mines, 
cruisers, or seasickness chose the Arctic Circle. 
Sweden and Finland are not joined by rail. A 
train went along the Gulf of Bothnia to Lapp- 
trask; later it ran to Karungi on a frontier 
river, the Tornea Elf. There was motor-car 
communication to Haparanda, still in Sweden; 
from Haparanda ferries, later sledges, crossed 
to Finnish Tornea. The journey from Stock- 
holm through Tornea to Russia took five days. 
Things got worse in September, when Germans 
sank a Finnish steamer and took enemy subjects 
off Swedish ships; still worse a month later, 
after Swedish steamers, three on one day, sank 
on mines at Mantyluoto. Sea traffic ceased. 
By Christmas the Arctic Circle route was 
shortened to three days. A railway was built 
from Tornea along the Tornea Elf to Finnish 
Karungi, opposite the Swedish terminus Ka- 
rungi; and two miles of marsh and water di- 
vided the lines. Swedish fear of Russia delayed 
the linking up. Later, Sweden relented. A 



28 COLOURS OF WAR 

branch line was built to Haparanda; and a 
bridge will be built after the war. 

The Bergen Steamship Company's steamer 
Neptune, which left Newcastle, carried Rus- 
sians. A Home Office official was hurt by their 
names; when he heard Kyril Maximiliano- 
vitsch Koliubakin, he hesitated; a policeman 
said, "Call you back again": and laughed. 
War jokes are lean. These were true Russians, 
soft, with soft faces, soft sibilant speech, soft 
hats, soft fruit bags, who feared mines and sea. 
The steamers were — and still are — small and 
bad. For safety they went along the coast of 
Scotland, taking half a day longer than in peace. 
No mines burst. At night off the coast of Nor- 
way, warships loomed, turned search-lights on 
the Neptune, and steamed alongside. There 
were no signals. The search-lights went out. 
On a sky and sea that seemed all one, spiked 
shadows stuck; whether they were Dread- 
nought shadows or gunboat shadows the Rus- 
sians argued long. 

The Russians represented their empire in 
races and ways. There were the painter and 
professor Alexander Makovski, a Judo-Polish 
jurist, a Jew from Bonn, a rich man of Moscow, 
a Siberian, many students, one from Warsaw, 
and student girls. There were one-year vol- 



LOST RUSSIANS 29 

unteers due to join the army. The students 
came from France or Germany; they had 
money enough to leave England, but not to 
reach Russia; so half the world exploited their 
poverty while the other half helped. Nobody 
knew the way. In the old days political refugees 
reached England through Finland and Scan- 
dinavia; for want of money they stopped in 
Stockholm or Christiania; and now refugees of 
war were in the same plight. The Jews fore- 
told the course of the war, and of the rouble. 
They expected to meet Germans at Warsaw. 
The Siberian's cousin had a brewery at Tomsk 
— if German prisoners came to Tomsk they 
might start competitive breweries. The rich 
man had walked five hundred yards on the Bel- 
gian frontier and lost his hat-box; he had no 
money, and offered a student girl an IOU for 
her berth. At Bergen we heard Brussels had 
fallen. "That is why the Wagons-Lits has not 
answered about the hat-box." In those days 
the worst sufferers were not soldiers with bul- 
let-holes, but men whose hat-boxes were lost. 
With the Russians were a few children; and 
there was an Englishman, as there is on every 
ship that sails on every sea. 

The Russians had many secrets, and they re- 
vealed them. A short-haired man whose busi- 



30 COLOURS OF WAR 

ness I guessed washed his hands beside me. He 
said he was Lieutenant-Colonel , an en- 
gineer; nobody must know he was a soldier; 
of course no Englishman would give him away. 
He knew about food supply in war; was in- 
ventor of a grain-sifter and refrigerator for sav- 
ing Russian wheat; and told me that Russia 
had a new department to organise war finance 
and feeding. The Germans, I remembered, had 
a plan, not executed, for an Economical General 
Staff. The Russian warned us that if people 
got hold of the fact that he was an officer . . . 
Five minutes later, he stood in the smoking- 
room, declaiming on war, policy, and grain- 
sifting; and began every proposition with, 
"Gentlemen, when I was a raw lieutenant . . ." 

The Russians gave me views of the war which 
agreed, except in that they were put coldly, 
with views I later heard in Russia. They 
talked of the war without passion as if it were 
a chess game played at the Equator by men 
they did not know. No one opposed the war; 
and no one wanted to exploit the Government's 
troubles for revolutionary aims. That showed 
a change: the war with Japan was treated by 
society as a Court adventure, welcome because 
it gave political malcontents a chance. 

The officer who concealed his business by 



LOST RUSSIANS 31 

telling it said that Russia promises a higher 
civilisation than Germany. The Russians are 
rude and unfit; they are neglected and op- 
pressed. But they have ideas. The Germans 
are all that materialistic civilisation can pro- 
duce. They have done their best for Europe 
and for themselves; their success means stag- 
nation. New things would come from the 
mystical ideology and anti-materialistic leanings 
of Russia. Russia has seeds for growth; Ger- 
mans have grown all their seeds. These notions 
are old: they are in Dostoyevsky, in Tolstoy, 
in the Slavophiles. The Russians on board ac- 
cepted them, and denied them. Some held that 
Russia's success means the strengthening of the 
autocracy, which all along professed to be rooted 
in humanity and democracy; others held that 
success means a real constitution. The Poles 
would not agree whether the Grand Duke's 
proclamation to Poland was meant or not. A 
student from Cracow knew that Austrian Poles 
are solid with Austria. "Stronger measures 
against Jews," the Warsaw student said, "would 
please me more than Home Rule." The Jews 
with good humour assured him he would get his 
way. 

The Englishman, as might be expected, 
talked sense. He was a young, intelligent man. 



32 COLOURS OF WAR 

He said that I might enter Berlin with the Rus- 
sian army and dine the Cossacks at my own 
house. From Berlin to Berlin might be the 
name of a book on the round tour. He envied 
men who saw war. "Enlist ! " said the Russians. 
They learned things which, as they had been 
few days in London, were new. The English- 
man had thought of enlisting; that was on the 
first day when things looked serious. On the 
fifth day he saw that before he could be drilled 
the war would end. The war, the Russians 
said, will be long; the enemy is strong. The 
Englishman said that he had once thought so, 
but that he was wrong. He read, before the 
war, the warnings of our experts on efficiency 
about the fitness of German methods and the 
terrors of the War Machine. The alarmist 
Teutonologues had now recanted. The disasters 
at Liege had shown the Germans up. The ex- 
perts said that the War Machine was a fraud; 
that the Emperor William was mad; that a 
small boy at Dison had waved a flag and put a 
squadron of Uhlans to flight. With cuttings 
from the best newspapers, the Englishman 
proved that the Germans did not know they 
were in Belgium; they thought they were in 
Bulgaria; and that the Germans had no shells. 
He said that our Government and Press were 



LOST RUSSIANS 33 

happy in this knowledge; they had promised 
universal felicity and low taxes; there were 
plans of retribution; monuments to aggression 
would be razed; one clever writer had arranged 
to tear off the Kaiser's epaulettes; some men 
went farther: they proposed to leave the 
Sieges-Allee alone. The Jew from Bonn doubted. 
The Englishman said there was a censorship to 
prevent circulation of untruths, even of truths, 
which might harm England; the newspaper 
story that the Germans had no shells must be 
both true and harmless. The Jew from Bonn 
still doubted. He said that the Germans were 
well prepared; true, the comprehensiveness of 
British Government programmes indicated thor- 
ough preparation; but there were differences in 
methods. This remark was obscure; the Jew's 
meaning, I think, was that the British Govern- 
ment had adequately prepared for victory, and 
that the German Government had only pre- 
pared for war. 

Once Bergen was a fishing and trading port; 
war made it the Atlantic Brindisi. There is a 
streak of water between rocks; at the end of 
the chasm, shadowed by hills, is the town. I 
met Mr. Wollert Konow, a former minister. 
Norwegian sympathies, I learned, were on our 
side. The Norwegians were not friendly to 



34 COLOURS OF WAR 

Russia. They believed that Russia would seize 
a Norwegian port; and threaten Norway's in- 
dependence. I told Mr. Konow that this, at 
least at present, is unlikely. He said that Nor- 
way and Sweden were thinking of the future. 
The Scandinavian states would sympathise with 
an English attempt to prevent the undue ag- 
grandisement of any Power. I talked with Mr. 
Mitchelet, editor of the Annoncentidende, with a 
Danish merchant, and others. All were friendly 
to us; and not friendly to Russia. The Dane 
wished for Germany's defeat. 

Norway, in part, was mobilised. In August 
the Storthing held a special session, and voted 
money. Bergen, Christiania, Narvik, and Trond- 
hjem were in a state of defence. Nobody hin- 
dered me climbing a pine-covered hill, and ex- 
amining the port through a field-glass. Sweden 
and Norway had signed an agreement to defend 
neutrality, and not to use against one another 
the new armaments. Civil life was deranged. 
No through trains ran; I changed at Charlot- 
tenberg on the Swedish frontier, and at Laxa. 
In the Swedish trains were officers; and at the 
stations reservists, and Landsturm men in civil 
dress and the three-cornered hat with a badge 
of three crowns which brings back the eighteenth 
century — it has been worn by the Swedish 



LOST RUSSIANS 35 

army only in the last years. The Landsturm 
men are strong; but they lack the military stamp 
of soldiers of Great Powers. 

On the 2nd of August Sweden mobilised her 
reserve and territorial army on the coast, in 
Gotland, and in garrison towns. The conscripts 
of 1915 were called up. A soldier became Min- 
ister of War; the Liberals ceased opposition to 
the defence project; and fifty million kronen 
were voted for "protective neutrality." All 
parties stood for neutrality. Elections to the 
Second Chamber in October made the Socialists 
the strongest party. In December, the Kings of 
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark met at Malmo 
to consider measures for meeting economic diffi- 
culties caused by the war. This meant measures 
for defence of neutrality: economic measures, 
in the shape of contraband quarrels, were the 
only likely causes of breach of neutrality. In 
January, it was announced that Swedish busi- 
ness was suffering losses. 

Stockholm reaps profits. The town is a clear- 
ing-house of the belligerents. There were specu- 
lators in German and Russian papers; and Rus- 
sians and Germans traded in spite of the official 
boycott, sometimes with official authority. Jews 
from Warsaw, who like Germans, and Orthodox 
Moscow merchants who hate them, bought 



36 COLOURS OF WAR 

German goods, stamped them "Made in Eng- 
land," and sent them home. Russians tried to 
buy German field-glasses and Germans to buy- 
Russian grain. It was as reasonable to buy an 
enemy's field-glasses and grain as it is to use 
field-glasses and grain taken in battle; and the 
tolerance of the enemies pleased the unimpas- 
sioned Swedes. 

The Swedes, some Left men excepted, wished 
for our defeat. With politeness they said why. 
Against Latins and Slavs they desired the soli- 
darity of the Germanic peoples. Themselves 
the most attractive Germanic race, they be- 
lieved that all Germanic races are attractive. 
They had swallowed our antique catchwords: 
"Down with Russian Autocracy!" "the Great 
Protestant nations," "the countrymen of 
Shakespeare ought to love the countrymen of 
Goethe." Such bad reasons for siding against 
us could not compete with German sophistry. 
The Swedes speak German. German news- 
papers reach Stockholm the day after issue. 
Science, plays, and clothes come from Germany. 
The chief British influence is "Tipperary": in 
Hasselbacken's restaurant dancers sang it; and 
editors, as heading for the wild talk of our 
ministers, printed "Lang, lang vag till Berlin." 
In Germany, Swedish war correspondents were 



LOST RUSSIANS 37 

welcomed, and given useful truths and un- 
truths. Our Government received correspond- 
ents coldly; it knew that they divulge military 
secrets, and preferred itself to do the divulging 
in speeches. When the ships sank off Manty- 
luoto, there was an Anglophile reaction; it 
passed on Herr Ballin sending the sufferers ten 
thousand pounds. In the spring there was a 
second Anglophile reaction which our states- 
men, with the quickness always shown in blun- 
dering, spoiled. They sent trade spies to make 
black-lists of Swedes who sold Germany coffee; 
the spying caused public scandals; some spies 
were expelled. Sealed mail-bags from America 
were opened in England; the contents were 
pilfered. This policy had success; coffee was 
dearer in Stockholm than in Berlin; and 
Sweden, being unable to hit England, stopped 
half the goods transport to Russia, and ham- 
pered Russia's prosecution of the war. There 
developed, and increased in measure with the 
Entente's military misfortunes, an agitation 
known as Activism, which demands Sweden's 
accession to the Central Powers independently 
of any special cause of war given by the En- 
tente. This agitation is officially condemned, 
and it is opposed by the neutralist majority; 
but the official policy of neutrality is not un- 



38 COLOURS OF WAR 

conditional, and if the assumptions on which 
it is based were shaken through a quarrel with 
any Entente Power, Activism might easily tip 
the scale in favour of war. 

Among influences which made the Swedes 
pro-German counts the zeal of Englishmen to 
make them pro-English. The Swedes are an 
honest, penetrating race. They liked our free- 
dom from inspired journalism, Government press 
agencies, pamphleteering, semiofficial profess- 
ors. They might have been bored towards the 
Entente by the Wolff Agency, the inversions of 
Herr Delbruck, and the eight hundred pages in 
which Dr. Hedin says that the Kaiser talked 
only to him. But England became Continental. 
Editors were offered from London a free news 
service. Letters from England promised pay- 
ment if abuse of Germany was printed in edi- 
torial columns; and the censor let pass the 
writers' claim to be our Government's agents. 
Public men and hotels were shelled with mis- 
sionary writings, full of patriotism, but empty 
of grammar and sense, the work of men incom- 
petent in politics, credulous, ignorant of lan- 
guages and life. Professors of Oxford made 
such a mess of their pamphlets that a Hessian 
patriot offered to pay for reprints. The Swedes 
did not want teaching from men who believe 



LOST RUSSIANS 39 

that the Kaiser promised a thousand pounds 
to every soldier if Warsaw were taken. The 
newspaper head-line, when not "A Long Way 
to Berlin!" was "What Englishmen Believe!" 
The Press Bureau sent boasts that England 
was not in a panic, and mistranslations so gross 
that they caused scandal. The explanation 
was given me. "The Press Bureau has men 
who know German; but no one who really 
knows it." 

The greatest influence in Sweden's thinking 
was dislike of Russia. The Russia of Peter 
dealt the first blow to Sweden, the Great Power; 
and Swedes fear that at Russia's hands may 
perish the small Power. They believe, with the 
Norwegians, that Russia wants an Atlantic 
port; that she will annex Northern Sweden, and 
seize the deposits of iron ore. They resented 
the espionage of M. Savinsky, the former Min- 
ister; they suspect Russian railway policy in 
Finland; and they hear Dr. Sven Hedin's 
tocsin. The Russians might take Konigsberg 
and Danzig, and threaten Sweden from there. 
It is no use telling Swedes that Russia never 
has plans; that she can develop her own ice- 
free ports; that she will no more get Konigs- 
berg than Cadiz. Finland colours Swedish feel- 
ing. The need for liberating the Grand Duchy, 



40 COLOURS OF WAR 

as an end in itself and as protection for Scan- 
dinavia's independence, is the main motive in 
the Activist war agitation. The relations of 
Finns, Swedes, and Russians may be understood 
by assuming the Germans to be in Ireland, sup- 
pressing our language, persecuting, and exiling 
to Togoland the Irish Protestants, half of whom 
have cousins or friends in England. Finland's 
culture is Swedish; Finns and Swedes read the 
same books; Finns come to Stockholm as to 
their metropolis. Swedish families intermarry 
with Swedish Finns; in Stockholm are Finnish 
exiles of distinction; some have become Swedish 
citizens. The Swedes say that Finland got 
back her liberties for a few months after Rus- 
sia's defeat by Japan; and they proclaim that 
from a similar cause there would be the same 
effect. All these reasons were put without pas- 
sion; with praiseworthy zeal to get the best of 
both worlds. At first the Swedes sold Russia 
shells; and with the profits bought books which 
expressed the hope that the shells would not 
burst. As a result of our policy, the sale ceased, 
and the purchase increased. 

To Finland I travelled on the Swithiod, with 
lost Russians and Jews, the Neptune's and 
others. The terrors of war were in all heads. 
Near Stockholm, said Russians, you must not 



LOST RUSSIANS 41 

bathe — you might dive on a mine. The Swedes 
had mined, at two places, the channel through 
the skerries. Passengers were sent below so 
that they might not see the sailors working, and 
the port-holes bristled with cameras. On the 
steamer were Professor Hjelt, Vice-Chancellor of 
Helsingfors University, head of the Finnish 
Cabinet when Finland had a cabinet, and Dr. 
Cajanus, an inspector of forestry. M. Hjelt 
was in South Germany at the outbreak of war; 
he was not treated as an enemy subject. There 
was a handsome, fair-haired girl who might 
have been a picture by Heinemann of Lustige 
Blatter. Fru Y came to Stockholm as Fraulein 
X of Dresden. Her brother built pumps at 
Moscow; he was sent as prisoner of war to 
Vologda; and his business would go to the dogs. 
Fraulein X engaged a Swede at twenty crowns 
to marry her; and with a Swedish passport 
made for Moscow. This war wedding recalled 
last days in Berlin. The Russians said that 
Fru Y was a spy, and that they would marry 
her for nothing; the Jews said that twenty 
crowns was enough. 

Raumo is on deep water, behind skerries in a 
maze, each like a sea-king's graveyard. Every 
mariner has set up a cross on every rock. 
There are piles of wood; many gendarmes, 



42 COLOURS OF WAR 

sleepy and dissipated; and Finnish policemen 
in Prussian helmets and coats. The policemen 
have not the Prussian stiffness and breadth. 
From Raumo, with Dr. Cajanus, I drove on a 
good road, fenced with weathered fir-sticks 
stuck aslant, to Abo, Finland's oldest town. I 
saw Abo eight years back, clean, with the same 
bright sun and sky, the same newly painted 
barques and barquentines matching the sky 
and spoiling the old Swedish burg. This time 
were washerwomen with brick faces and ver- 
milion rags, models for Zorn, bent over water 
opaque and bright as if the washerwomen had 
poured in all their blue. On the steamer to 
Pargas a Finn, to show the ways of Finland's 
middle class, retold a story by Pylkkanen. The 
steamer wound between skerries in channels 
sown with mines. I spent a day with Dr. 
Reuter, Professor of Sanscrit at Helsingfors, a 
scholar and patriot whom Englishmen know. I 
saw him in Helsingfors eight years back, when 
Russian guns shelled Russian Sveaborg, when 
the mutineers, having won the forts, went home 
in Russian way to tea, and let their foes es- 
cape. 

Helsingfors was quiet. At night on the sea- 
front no lights were shown. In Raumo I heard 
that Helsingfors was evacuated; the Germans 



LOST RUSSIANS 43 

had come; a German consul had been shot for 
hiring Finnish pilots; many professors had been 
executed; and Hango was destroyed. The 
truth was that the consul at Abo, Herr Gaedecke, 
was put in gaol; and that the lighthouse and 
storage sheds at Hango were destroyed. The 
Commandant of Hango, said Finns, was asked 
how long it would take to blow up the port; 
he did not know, and promised to find out; 
having battered the lighthouse lenses and blown 
up the sheds, he answered with a precision which 
drew praise. Outside Sveaborg at anchor, 
under command of Admiral v. Essen, a good 
officer now dead, was the Baltic Fleet. There 
were four battleships. At sunrise the fleet left 
Sveaborg; officers thought they were going to 
battle; they said farewell to wives and sis- 
ters who, in Russian way, had followed them; 
when the sun set, the ships returned, and wives 
and sisters rejoiced. This happened daily. The 
Ariadne stood at the quay, a white Finnish 
steamer, marked with a Red Cross. This hos- 
pital ship had not been used. In the town was 
the Twenty-Second Corps, under command of 
General v. Brincken. Soldiers and, at night, 
sailors were in every street. Citizens got on 
well with them; there was no drunkenness; and 
the kindly manner which is natural to Russians 



44 COLOURS OF WAR 

won the soldiers more respect than bureaucrats 
ever see. 

I talked to Senator Hjelt, to Dr. Ignatius, a 
displaced judge of the Court of Appeal, to Dr. 
Toerngren, the author of clever books on Rus- 
sia, who formerly looked after Finland's inter- 
ests in St. Petersburg, to Mrs. Tekla Hultin, 
a member of the Young Finnish party in the 
Diet. The Finns are politically the maturest 
people in Russia; and it was not surprising that, 
unlike belligerents and some neutrals, they kept 
their heads. There were no disorders and no 
threats. It was not likely that Germany would 
disperse her strength by sending troops to Fin- 
land. If troops did come, Finland would not 
help. No Finnish party, and no known indi- 
vidual, stood for that. The Finns knew that 
the Germans, whether winners or losers, would 
make peace without considering their helpers, 
leaving Finland to pay the penalty. 

The resentment of the Finns at the loss of 
their liberties was not changed by the war. But 
some hoped. These felt to the Russian crown 
the old loyalty, deep and sincere when the Con- 
stitution was respected; and, thinking loyalty 
might bring alleviation, they wanted to show it. 
Some Finns volunteered to serve with Russia; 
and some talked of raising a Finnish legion. The 



LOST RUSSIANS 45 

Finnish army, dissolved in 1902, had not been 
restored; but at Sveaborg there were Finnish 
officers of reserve; and in the field were other 
Finns, among them the cavalry general Count 
Mannerheim, who did good work in Poland and 
Galicia. The Finns received well the Dowager 
Empress when she returned through their coun- 
try; they looked after the lost Russians; and 
they prepared to help the wounded. Their con- 
duct made a good impression; and from St. 
Petersburg came stories of a manifesto of recon- 
ciliation. 

The cliques which are enemies of Russia as 
much as enemies of Finland were against recon- 
ciliation. St. Petersburg Nationalists, profess- 
ing a new friendship for Poles, and tolerance 
for Jews, held that the Finns, far from the 
war, might be ignored. The Governor-General 
agreed. Not content with enforcing the illegal- 
ities of others for which he was not responsible, 
he showed personal zeal in doing harm, in par- 
ticular for traducing the Finns to his superiors. 
The war was his chance. His misrepresentations 
kept in Finland the well-trained Twenty-Second 
Corps at a time when it was badly wanted in 
Poland. After the battle of Tannenberg, St. 
Petersburg saw through General Seyn: the 
corps was withdrawn. The general commanding 



46 COLOURS OF WAR 

wrote his thanks to Helsingfors. The Governor- 
General forbade the publication of the letter; 
publication would have spoiled the plot to con- 
vince Russia that Finns are disloyal and to 
convince Finland that Russians are unjust. 
While all belligerent states were seeking moral 
support, the persecution of Finland continued. 
Some of the country's best citizens were thrown 
into prison for no offence under Finland's laws, 
and the former President of the Diet, M. 
Svinhuvud, was sent to Siberia, where he re- 
mains. I agreed with the reasoning of the Finns 
that the restoration of the Constitution is a 
Russian, as well as a Finnish interest, the in- 
terest of the international group which Russia 
belongs to. But Finland is not a British prov- 
ince; and meddling in other countries' oppres- 
sions is thankless. When Finns who read Eng- 
lish newspapers heard of this obstacle, they 
stared. They said we had promised Europe 
freedom on lines of nationality when the Ger- 
mans were beaten; and that the Germans 
would soon be beaten as they had no shells. 

In Finland was seen the easy way of Russia's 
war preparations. I spent a night at Abo and 
two nights at Helsingfors without showing a 
passport. I was told that to drive a motor-car 
past the town limits of Raumo, I must have the 



LOST RUSSIANS 47 

Commandant's permit. The Commandant was 
on a warship; his assistant was dining at the 
speed of one course an hour. After the time 
needed for two courses, all authorities agreeing 
that only the Commandant or his assistant 
could sign a permit, a plain policeman wrote on 
unheaded foolscap a permit. At the town limits, 
no one asked for the permit. The Customs 
had orders to search baggage for more danger- 
ous things than cigars; but most luggage went 
through without search. Later, zeal was shown 
in preventing letters getting out, and more 
zeal in preventing them getting in. Neither 
aim was attained, nor any except the delaying 
of trains. At Vyborg station, guards pulled 
down the blinds, and passengers pulled them 
up. At Bieloostrov, the frontier station of Rus- 
sia, there was a half-hearted search through 
half the luggage. Months later came a new 
system; travellers had to state their business, 
and to give addresses of persons who knew 
them. There were not the minute regulation 
and strict observance which I saw in Germany; 
and the indolent domestic spirit which is Rus- 
sia's charm was not perturbed. At the Finnish 
railway station in Petrograd, it seemed that 
the lost Russians caused more emotion than 
the war. One sentry stood guard. There were 



48 COLOURS OF WAR 

some martial-law notices; and many notices 
begging for news of men and women stranded 
in Europe. Excited men seized the newly 
arrived: "Have you seen Nina Petrovna Zhil- 
kin, who was at Schandau near Dresden?" was 
the first thing I heard. 



CHAPTER III 
WORK 

IN Petrograd lives a general whom I shall 
call Kozhin, a good soldier, a patriot, who 
loved comfort. In June, he was trans- 
ferred to the dull town Gluchov, where there is 
no pavement, though there is electric light; 
where champagne is drunk because there is no 
clean water. The spoiled man, attacked by- 
gout, resigned. In a month came war, and all 
wanted to fight. Kozhin asked for the command 
of an army. The Minister said no; we have 
healthy generals. "I have recovered," said the 
invalid, "I would take a corps." The Min- 
ister said no. The general asked for a division; 
for a brigade; then he offered to serve in any 
rank, anywhere. Nobody wanted him. He 
tried Red Cross work, and other things; all 
posts were filled. 

Kozhin vowed that he would serve Russia. 
He kept his word. An adjutant, who came with 
news that the Minister had relented, first found 
how. The general's wife, daughters, servants 
sat at a table, and sewed herringbone edges to 

49 



50 COLOURS OF WAR 

soldiers' foot-clouts — the portianki worn in- 
stead of socks, as German soldiers wear Fuss- 
lappen. At the top of the table, with pride and 
resignation on his face, sat the general. He was 
herringboning foot-clouts, too. 

In listless St. Petersburg, a town which pro- 
duces little, all were at work. The soldiers, pro- 
fessional men, merchants, women. They knew 
that victory means labour, or worked for the 
charity which is in Russian hearts. Women 
sewed shirts, mufflers, foot-clouts, bags for to- 
bacco; they managed hospitals, or took the 
three weeks' nursing course. When they were 
not working or nursing they collected. On the 
pillars were appeals: "Warm our Warriors!" 
"St. Petersburg to the Defenders of the Father- 
land!" Collectors swarmed in restaurants, six 
at once, all begging from all diners for one char- 
ity, each giving a badge to protect you from the 
next, each begging with special zeal where he 
saw badges; till all badges, and money, were 
gone. Men in the streets wore badges in 
sheaves; drosky drivers wore single badges; 
and poor people put credit notes into the col- 
lecting boxes, and gave the badges back. 

Collecting was done by students from the 
University and by girls from the Women's 
Higher Courses. Since Revolution days, the 



WORK 51 

students have changed. Students cut their 
hair; they are cleaner, less intense; student 
girls grow their hair, their dress is neater, and 
they seldom smoke. They collected tobacco. 
In the Nevsky, in the Mariya Square, were 
many hundred collectors, with cardboard boxes 
half full of cigarettes, a few cigars, rarely a pipe. 
The soldier likes mild tobacco rolled in a thin, 
feminine cigarette; or he smokes in a funnel of 
newspaper makhorka, & plant akin to tobacco, 
nearer akin to Prussian chlorium shells. A col- 
lector of tobacco, and sewer of shirts, was my 
old friend Marianna Tcherkasskaya-Paletchek 
of the Imperial Opera. To every shirt she sewed 
a silver cross engraved "Save and Preserve!" 
and a note which began "Dear Soldier!" The 
note asked how the soldier was; what a battle 
is like; and how about the children? After 
weeks, the soldier answered that he was well; 
that battles were tiring; that he had four chil- 
dren, Matvei, Sidor, Avdotya, and Stepanida; 
and that he hoped soon to get home. I read 
many answers. There was one, addressed but 
unposted, with a bullet-hole and life-blood. The 
soldier said that he had not been in battle; 
that he had two children, Karp and Akulina, 
and that he hoped soon to get home. 

Outwardly, St. Petersburg was much as it is 



52 COLOURS OF WAR 

in peace. Street demonstrations had ceased. 
There were a few processions with icons. The 
monument to war violence was the German 
Embassy building in the Morskaya Street. 
This is a big, unpleasing house of Finnish red 
granite, like the mass emporiums of Berlin. 
Authors of rejected plans — Germans — called 
it barbarous; and foretold that angry Russians 
would pull it down. The omen was fulfilled. 
On the night of the 4th of August, the mob 
sacked the house, and did to death an Embassy 
official, Herr Kattner. The statues on the roof 
were thrown into the Moika canal. The police 
looked on. Later the windows were boarded 
up. The walls remain spattered with mud. 
After that, for a long time there was no ill- 
treatment of enemy subjects by private citizens. 
In June, during the defeats in Galicia, mobs in 
Moscow sacked German houses and shops, and 
massacred Germans. Later, they burned Rus- 
sian houses, shops, factories, and army equip- 
ment workshops. For bloodshed and destruc- 
tion this event excelled the Jewish pogroms. 
The chief cause was rage at the military posi- 
tion, which could no longer be concealed from 
any public but the British. The official tele- 
graph agency praised the affair to foreign coun- 
tries as proof of national resolution and pledge 



WORK 53 

of success. In the Duma the Government was 
charged with having organised the outbreak. 

Measured by population, Russia's field army- 
is small. Public services were not curtailed; 
the passenger trains, trams, and droskies were 
as in peace. Strong hall-porters, dvorniks, and 
commissionaires lounged in the yards. The 
town was orderly; there were no restaurant 
scandals; and no fights between soldiers and 
civilians. Soldiers were treated with respect. 
The soldiers, and reservists on the way to de- 
pots, behaved well. The war brought a moral 
unity of which there was no sign ten years be- 
fore. Drinking, the one thing apart from police 
incitements that upsets the mild people, was 
forbidden. 

In the days of mobilisation the state vodka 
shops were closed; later they were closed till 
October; and at last, till the end of the war. 
As no private interest except the interest of dis- 
tiller landowners was hurt, nearly all approved. 
The sale of wine and beer was suspended; later 
it was allowed under restriction. Vodka, as 
sold retail by the state, has 40 per cent, of al- 
cohol, in Poland 50 per cent. Twenty years 
ago publicans sold vodka in their own drink- 
shops; the vodka was bad; gambling and 
usury went with drinking on the premises. In 



54 COLOURS OF WAR 

1895 and the years following, M. Witte estab- 
lished the state monopoly. Poles only were 
compensated, they having a vested interest. 
Witte's motives were temperance, finance, and 
the centralising of economic resources in the 
state's hands. The state manufactured vodka; 
and sold it in sealed bottles. From vodka came 
a third of the revenue, and the state was in- 
terested in pushing the sale. Conscience was 
calmed by payment of subsidies to Curacies of 
National Temperance, official institutions which 
helped to found People's Theatres, and other 
enlightening works, but were distrusted, being 
bureaucratic, by independent social workers. 
Some temperance men thought they did more 
harm than good. In law there was a qualified 
Local Option; the village communes could peti- 
tion for closing of the state vodka shops : in prac- 
tice, the petitions were ignored. The system, 
though no worse than the old system, was bad. 
Vodka is not a beverage; it is drunk to excess 
on Sundays and holidays. Under the monopoly 
there was no drinking on the premises. Street 
drinking became the Russian form of intemper- 
ance; the street of the state drink shop had its 
trail of reeling men; the shop was shown by 
red patches on the lintels from the seals of the 
"little scoundrels" — so the small bottles were 



WORK 55 

called. Communal funds continued to be spent 
on drink; labour hirings, festivals, and family 
events were celebrated by drinking. On Sun- 
days ten thousand drunkards were picked up in 
Petrograd streets. They spent Mondays sleep- 
ing off the effects. An anti-alcohol congress of 
1898 condemned the monopoly; since then, 
condemnations have been many; and when M. 
Kokovtseff left office, the Tsar declared that 
the Budget must no longer be based on national 
misery. There is now no public drunkenness. 
There is illicit drinking of vodka, ether, eau de 
cologne, and furniture polish. The towns are 
quiet. The economy of health and labour will 
pay something towards the cost of the war. 

Economic conditions were not bad. The low 
proportion of men taken as soldiers made it 
possible to continue industrial undertakings. 
Mining labour was short. Before the war be- 
gan, the heaviest field work was done; women 
and children work in harvest; and the food 
production was normal. In the towns prices 
were high. Prices of manufactured goods rose 
owing to the cessation of import. Food prices 
rose because mobilisation stopped the freight 
traffic. The peasants did not gain from the 
rise; they could not sell their food in the towns 
or to foreign countries. It was hoped that when 



56 COLOURS OF WAR 

mobilisation was complete prices would fall, 
and would remain until export was resumed 
lower than in peace. After mobilisation, prices 
fell a little; but they remain very high; meat 
prices have doubled. The railroad freight traffic 
never became normal. There were not enough 
engines and cars. The Germans seized the 
Polish coal-mines; wood was moved with diffi- 
culty, and there was scarcity of fuel. Employ- 
ment was good. The stoppage of import and 
the special war needs forced Russia to manu- 
facture many things formerly bought abroad. 
The chief were medical stores, optical and 
scientific instruments, electrical machinery, 
dyes, and printing inks. Zemstvos opened fac- 
tories; and University scholars gave scientific 
help. This movement progressed; the new 
products are not much inferior to the foreign; 
but the cost of production is high. The finan- 
cial situation was not promising. With the 
suspension of the vodka monopoly and the loss 
of import duties, the chief wells of revenue dried 
up. Direct taxes are few; and to increase them 
is hard. Taxes were imposed on telephones, 
postage became dearer, and there were new 
lotteries. The economic gain from the new 
abstinence from spirits cannot be turned into 
taxes at once. 



WORK 57 

In the streets the signs of war were wounded, 
many women in black, funerals, and masses for 
the dead. The shops sold pictures of the Tsar 
speaking from the Winter Palace and from the 
Kremlin; portraits of the Grand Duke Nich- 
olas; postcards with the Grand Duke's procla- 
mations to the Poles; and photographs of 
generals: Rennenkampf, Ivanoff, and Zhilinsky. 
Every month the generals changed; Rennen- 
kampf and Zhilinsky were replaced by Ruzski, 
Brusiloff, Alexeyeff . These in turn disappeared. 

The windows blazed with "wretched pic- 
tures." The wretched pictures (liubotchniya 
hartini) are bright lithographs. In peace they 
hang in every cabin and make parks for cock- 
roaches: they show "The Emancipation of the 
Serfs, February, 1861," and "The Siege of the 
Trinity Monastery by the Poles"; and they 
are sold in small shops. In war, the subjects 
are livelier. Ten years ago, the wretched pic- 
tures showed good-humoured Cossacks spitting 
Japanese; the flight of Admiral Togo; and 
other events of history. This time the demand 
for pictures was great. The hero of most was 
the Cossack Krutckkoff, who spitted eleven 
foes, and got the St. George's Cross. Krutch- 
koff appeared as a true Cossack, with curls, a 
cap worn with coquetry on one side, and the 



58 COLOURS OF WAR 

smile of a man who has slain eleven. He had 
three Germans on his lance; the eight, in Noah's 
Ark style, wriggled on discarded lances. The 
peasant Liakhoff, who wrote a commentary on 
Krutchkoff, says that as each lance took two 
Germans, an angel brought a new lance. "The 
Germans have no anti-airship guns," said Liak- 
hoff. "A good thing for the angels." The 
other pictures make the Germans odious, and 
the Russians good-humoured and bloodthirsty. 
A Russian cuts the Kaiser in two, or His Maj- 
esty is slapped (in rearguard action) by a snub- 
nosed Ismailoff guardsman while the Austrian 
ally sprawls. The guardsman is a poet: 

" Because you have provoked a storm 
You'll get a smack on your platform; 
You'll get a slap 
With a strap. 

Meantime I'll tread upon the toe 
Of your absurd ally, our foe; 
And soon I'll make the rascal wiser, 
And eager to forswear the Kaiser." 

The only angry cartoon was The Kaiser Anti- 
christ, with His Sulphurity, under winged fiends, 
astride a swine. A monastery of Novgorod prov- 
ince had drawings for a fresco, The Slav Peoples 
Foiling Teuton Barbarism. Russia, with Servia 
much in earnest beside her, stretched out her 
hand — the arrangement recalled Nations of 



WORK 59 

Europe Defend Your Holiest Goods! The Su- 
perior told me that the first sketch was burnt. 
The monks unrolled paper for new sketches; 
and went to bed. Next morning they found 
Russia and Servia outlined by heavenly hand. 
To the question whether the monks were locked 
in their cells at night, the Superior said, "In 
war time we must have faith." 

There was at first no war literature or art. 
Pictures in the spring exhibition of the advanced 
society, The Peripatetics, dealt with the war. 
Cheap editions of the Orange Book were sold. 
At the Little Theatre, I saw a play by MM. 
Dalsky and Korsakoff, The Shame of Germany. 
There was a good parody of Max and Moritz as 
the two German Emperors; later a play by M. 
Burenin on the capture of Berlin by the Tsaritsa 
Elizabeth's soldiers. In Esthonia, peasants 
played The New Poltava. The Kaiser was the 
new Charles the Twelfth; there was a New 
Mazeppa (not the Imperial Chancellor). Dum- 
mies in uniforms of green paper played Ger- 
mans. Villagers refused these roles. "Why? 
Because you hate the Germans?" "We hate 
nobody; we don't like running away." "The 
dummies don't run away; you could stand still 
as they do." "We should have to run." Cos- 
sacks came on the stage with lances, whips, 



60 COLOURS OF WAR 

and red cloths used as blood; and made the 
peasant's meaning plain. 

The newspaper censorship, exercised in the 
Commander-in-Chief's name, was severe. Lib- 
eral papers were suppressed; fines as high as 
£1000 were imposed. Newspapers of enemy 
countries were excluded; the enemies' official 
reports were suppressed. Good news was is- 
sued; drawn engagements appeared as victories; 
and defeats did not appear. Of the battle of 
Tannenberg the public learned only that three 
generals were killed, and that the losses were 
heavy. After the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, 
which cost Russia Galicia, Poland, Courland, 
and Lithuania, a statement was made to neutral 
countries that the enemy had had no success of 
any kind. Losses of territory were ascribed to 
strategical considerations, they were pledges of 
coming success. The Government did not in- 
vent the weekly marches on Berlin and de- 
structions of Field-Marshal Hindenburg which 
rejoiced England; this higher class of work was 
left to the ally. Editors complained that truth 
was suppressed; to remedy the grievance they 
filled their unofficial columns with inventions 
far beyond a government's power. As with 
us, novelists whose books ceased to sell, turned 
to statecraft. After boring readers for years 



WORK 61 

by the admirable Russian restraint, they pro- 
duced explanations why Bavarians massacre 
Prussians, and Kaiser's Prayers with the exor- 
dium, "I, God, am thy pig!" The transforma- 
tion was surprising, for no example was set 
from above; ministers kept silent, not under- 
standing with ours that jeers from the gallery 
are the nobler half of war. 

As in Berlin in the last days, there was a new 
nationalism, a turning from foreign, in partic- 
ular from enemy ways. From aping foreigners 
Russia, like Germany, suffered. St. Peters- 
burg became Petrograd. The change was made 
by Imperial decree; in the newspapers beside 
the decree was news of the battle of Tannen- 
berg. The agitation for Petrograd, which 
means Peter's-town, was begun by Moscow 
Czechs, who took Russian citizenship, and be- 
came more Russian than the Russians. Some 
Russians found that the change to Petrograd 
was childish; some that Petrograd sounds like 
a small Balkan town; some condemned a 
breach with history; the city is the European, 
Germanic creation of Peter; and Sanct-Peters- 
burg, scholars said, was a form not German but 
Dutch. Schliisselburg became Oriekhoff. Those 
who approved asked for the change of Kron- 
stadt, Oranienbaum, and the Tsar's summer 



62 COLOURS OF WAR 

home, Peterhof; and cynics said that the Ger- 
mans would change Petrograd to Wilhelmstadt. 
The German language was no longer heard; 
speaking German in public was punished by 
fine; and the German newspapers were sup- 
pressed. Shops concealed that they were Ger- 
man; the restaurant Leiner became "Restau- 
rant of the Association of Russian Waiters," 
and the dish Vienna Schnitzel became Kharkoff 
Slab. Later, German businesses were closed. 
Measures were taken against Germanism in 
the Baltic Provinces; and in the south against 
the German farmers. The Minister of In- 
struction, M. Casso, since dead, planned to 
replace the German language with English and 
Swedish. Subjects of the enemy states were 
sent to Viatka, Vologda, and Orenburg: wo- 
men and men without military obligations left 
Russia. The trains through Finland were full 
of expelled Germans. Many had been born in 
Russia; they had no connections with Germany, 
and could not speak German. They were allowed 
to take fifty roubles in money and valuables. 
Fifty thousand enemy subjects left Petrograd. 
Some, long settled, became subjects of the 
Tsar. 

The places of expelled enemies were taken by 
wounded. These were brought from the rail- 



WORK 63 

way stations in Red Cross motor-cars, or in 
coupled trams; one tram converted for badly 
wounded who could not sit, the other with seats 
as in peace. In Moscow, where streets are 
paved with cobbles, all wounded were moved 
in trams. The transport was well done. Every 
street had a Red Cross on a shield; and an in- 
scription sometimes in Russian, sometimes in 
gnarled Slavonic: 

"Lazaret of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mavrikievna." 
"Lazaret of the Commune of St. George the Victory- 

Bringer." 
"Lazaret of Piotr Michailovitch Ossetinsky." 
"Lazaret of the Bank of Commerce." 

Men of different classes, religious orders, and 
trading corporations founded hospitals or main- 
tained them. There were hospitals without 
these signs. At houses of friends called on 
after long absence, I found nursing homes. 
The families crowded into back rooms. I 
visited the hospital at Tsarskoe Selo Palace, 
the Empress Mariya Hospital in the Michael 
Palace, the Obukhoff Municipal Hospital, and 
the smaller hospitals of private persons. The 
hospitals were clean and quiet. Officers had 
no complaints; the soldiers were better off than 
at home. The nurses were clever, devoted, and, 
after short practice, fit for their work. Surgeons 



64 COLOURS OF WAR 

had not enough instruments and medicaments; 
help was expected from allied and neutral states. 
In private houses, women sat round tables pre- 
paring bandages, lint, compresses: there were 
many deaths; and as soldiers should be decently 
buried, different authorities were preparing cof- 
fins, crosses, and wreaths. 

In these days most wounds were caused by 
shell splinters and shrapnel bullets. There 
were many contusions and burns. There were 
abnormal or serious wounds from bullets that 
changed position during flight and struck 
obliquely to their axes; from deformed shrapnel 
bullets that took with them cloth, hooks, or 
buttons; and from normal rifle-bullets. When 
travelling at great speed the normal bullet 
splinters hard bones, and sends the blood flying 
with explosive effect. In Poland I saw that 
proved by experiment on animals. There were 
many cases of lockjaw. Men were blinded by 
the pressure of gas from bursting shells, branded 
by shells that passed them by, and stripped of 
their clothing. Men stripped are often killed; 
the compressed gas gets into the body cavities 
or under the clothes, as it expands it rends body 
and clothes. From shells of the Thick Berthas, 
of the Austrian Pilseners, and of the Austrian 
30.5 mortars men disappear. 



WORK 65 

For visiting, the apartment hospitals were 
best. In them were lightly wounded and con- 
valescent soldiers, who liked to see visitors and 
to talk. The men were brave. They knew 
little of battles, and could seldom describe what 
they had seen and felt. There were exceptions; 
and I got rough notions of soldier minds. Con- 
fidence was great. Whatever the end of a 
battle, the soldiers recalled only the successful 
parts. They criticised the Germans, praising 
the German artillery, and laughing, without 
reason, at the infantry. The infantry was "no 
good." "Little, pale men who couldn't drive 
a horse or grow fruit." The man who said this 
fought at Hohenstein against Hamburg Land- 
sturm men, probably middle-aged clerks. Men 
had vivid but confused memories. A soldier 
of the Army of the Narew said that at a rear- 
guard fight at Soldau, fought before the battle 
of Tannenberg, seven German companies lost 
450 men. He told of the self-sacrifice of a com- 
rade, heard of from prisoners. The comrade, 
when standing sentry on Mlava bridge, found 
Germans on the girders beneath. He fired in 
the air to summon help, next at the enemy. 
The Germans shouted advice to the Russian 
to leave his post and surrender. The bridge 
was mined. The sentry continued to fire. The 



66 COLOURS OF WAR 

Germans fled. Bridge and sentry were blown 
up. 

Soldiers tell stories hard to believe. With- 
out intention they elaborate; plain tales in 
going the round of a regiment gather im- 
probable complications. A clear-headed Baltic 
Province soldier told me that his comrades 
acted as executioners for the enemy. They 
surprised an outpost; and got, undisturbed, to 
the camp behind. German discipline is severe; 
and small offences are punished with death. 
The Russians, drawing near to the camp, crept. 
Peering over a hillock, they saw a blindfolded 
soldier standing before a firing-party. They 
were startled; and they watched. From an- 
other side came more Russians. These fired a 
volley : the first man to fall was the condemned. 
The Germans made off, leaving their wounded. 
The condemned man lay senseless with a bullet 
in the thigh. He was carried off by bearers who 
had not seen the execution. A surgeon, stop- 
ping the blood, assumed that the German had 
an old wound on the face; and remarked that 
it was strangely tied up. He pulled the hand- 
kerchief away. I found a Cossack from Ren- 
nenkampfs Army of Vilna, who rode nearly to 
Insterburg, and at Tapiau was wounded in the 
ankle and head. His hair was cropped; his 



WORK 67 

face was gaunt and scarred; a tchuprina (the 
thin, long lock formerly worn on the crown) 
would have made him a Cossack of Gogol. 
With a vain grin, he showed me a photograph 
taken months before the war, showing a dif- 
ferent Cossack with smooth face, long, care- 
fully curled hair, and a forage-cap, worn as 
always coquettishly awry. He boasted that 
Cossacks stand above moujiks in civilisation; 
their land is better tilled; their houses have 
good roofs; education is higher; they have 
poetry and art. He pronounced the word 
"art" with reverence. But the Cossacks have 
the freebooter tradition: their spirit is liberty, 
boldness: they despise the moujik's Christianity, 
the abject will and fear of worldly success. 

Petrograd talked of death. Hospitals in 
Petrograd and Moscow had room for a million; 
it followed that in each period equal to the 
average duration of cure, a million men would 
be wounded. In early September, after Kras- 
nik, Lemberg, and Tannenberg there were sto- 
ries of heavy losses: extinctions of guards' 
regiments; families that lost three sons; old 
races ended. Little was known. In the Palace 
Square, the Special Department for Collecting 
and Registering the Names of Persons in the 
Active Army Put out of Action drew crowds as 



68 COLOURS OF WAR 

long as the department's name. The Palace 
Square is a cobble-paved, neglected space be- 
tween the neglected crescent building of the 
Ministries of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs 
and the neglected Winter Palace. Up-stairs 
went ladies from automobiles, wrinkled work- 
women in shawls, ancient, untidy generals; 
they crushed patiently with Russian fraternity. 
Lists of the killed hung on the walls, and no 
one could get near them. There was confusion. 
The surnames Ivanoff, Kuznetsoff, Smirnoff, 
with them the Christian names Ivan, Piotr, 
Matvei got mixed up. Newspapers told of a 
dead Smirnoff claimed by twenty widows. A 
Moscow girl learned from the newspapers of 
the death of the officer she was to marry. Later, 
he was listed as a prisoner. Last he was said to 
be wounded at Tsarskoe Selo. The girl went 
to the hospital, and found, at the point of death, 
a man she did not know. The betrothed officer, 
mortally wounded, had given papers to a com- 
rade; the comrade was badly wounded; and 
the papers were supposed to be his own. Men 
stripped naked by shells lost their identity 
marks; they were reported missing; and their 
kith and kin wait for the day of peace when the 
Germans will send them home. 
The terrors around, the endless death-lists, 



WORK 69 

and certain omens which shocked the universal 
confidence worked on Petrograd in a special 
way. The exaltation of revolutionary days 
came back. People were strange; they behaved 
in ways their own. They spoke to one another 
in the streets. Emotion, like drink it may be, 
sharpens character and brings idiosyncrasies 
out. The fraternal people became more frater- 
nal; and the barriers, always weak, which sep- 
arate men from men fell. Strange proposals 
were made; and cold-minded men who in peace 
times laugh at eccentricities found the proposals 
commonplace and right. An actress known to 
me, a clever, cultivated woman, went daily to 
cry with the wounded; went in old clothes as 
if she really suffered, and brought no photog- 
rapher. She did many things which are not 
done in peace. A concert, to bring in money 
for chocolate for soldiers, was planned. In 
Russia humane impulses are curbed; singing 
without authority is sinful; and authority 
dines at the rate of one course a day. The 
actress went to a lady in waiting, who would 
speak to the Tsar. This was an old, old lady, 
a princess, sharp and erect, impiously proud, 
so high over honours other than being herself 
that she dropped the title and was known as 
mademoiselle. All day long, high-nosed and 



70 COLOURS OF WAR 

rouged, she sat in a stiff chair, counting stitches 
and muttering of dead friends: and few dared 
approach. She gave the promise. The actress 
had never seen any sight so wonderful; and 
she showed her pleasure. It was time to go. 
The lady in waiting took up the mittens, and 
said "Good day!" The actress said "Good 
day!" and waited. She reddened and said, 
"May I look at you for a moment? You have 
no idea how happy I am. I never saw such 
bright eyes, and your face looks as if it were 
stained with rose petals. Even on the stage 
we never have anything like you; you are more 
like a Dresden-china marquise than a woman 
on earth. I have a favour to ask you. May I 
give you a kiss ?" The old lady was astonished; 
she began to cry. Palace life is dull; maybe 
this was the first scene of grace and pathos since 
the maker of Russia poured soup into cour- 
tiers' hair. 

The soldiers who were to get the chocolates, 
tobacco, and coffins drilled in public. The drill 
yard was the Champ de Mars, a dusty space 
near the red building of our Embassy. Some 
companies drilled in uniform, some in civilian 
dress. The soldiers were Petrograd artisans, 
carters, and bargees; there were educated 
men — I saw two in the uniform of the College 



WORK 71 

of Technology. Reservists of the active army 
drilled over again; and there were new men 
learning the opening of rifle locks, and the 
meaning of raz, dva! All was in Russian way. 
The drill is easier than the German; there is 
no parade step; discipline is rougher, but there 
are human relations between sergeant and con- 
script. Men grin at their blunders, munch 
bread, and joke. Civilians and officers not on 
duty crowd in. An officer speaks to an ugly 
soldier who looks like Tolstoy in youth. The 
soldier grins; and his comrades laugh loud. 
The soldier told me the joke: it was about a 
collegiate secretary's horse, and had no point. 
In the field the human relation continues; it 
is a moral bond which repairs many failings. 
Soldiers at Lodz found their wounded captain 
under the ruins of a gun; sooner than forsake 
him they stood and were bayoneted: a captain 
of the 73rd Regiment crept from the trenches 
to save a wounded servant, and a bullet ended 
his brotherly work. 

Studying soldiers, I went with a volunteer to 
Krasnoe Selo, the camp and manoeuvre field to 
the south. It was still summer. Soldiers were 
playing football, twenty men a side, "because 
forty wanted to play." The spirit is elastic — 
if a hundred wanted to play, why not play fifty 



72 COLOURS OF WAR 

a side? Forswearing ideality, aestheticism, and 
revolutionary exaltation, the nation took to 
sport. Zeal cooled when the Tsar instituted a 
Regulation Committee. The Chairman, the 
Palace Commandant General Voyeikoff, was a 
sportsman; but social initiatives get best on 
alone. When night fell we set out to a soldiers' 
soiree; plunged through Ingermannland mud, 
and lost our way. There were soldiers all round. 
A soldier told us his rank was "buyer of food"; 
his comrade, a handsome man in blouse and 
apron, was battalion "porridge-boiler." The 
porridge-boiler pointed across mud to a strip 
of light. This was a chink in a barn near pines. 
The light came from oil-lamps. There was a 
stage — planks on pine-trunk trestles — above 
were an oleograph, a true wretched picture, of 
a smooth-faced autocrat, and the new flag. 
The flag is the old red, white, and blue, with 
the Romanoff eagle in a corner, to express, said 
the Tsar's decree, the unity of Tsar and nation. 
The patroness, stout and handsome, was a gen- 
eral's wife. Soldiers and boys from a military 
school played the balalaika; there was a play 
Bald but Not Bad-Tempered; afterwards supper, 
which was dinner postponed, cabbage soup, 
buckwheat porridge, and boiled beef. The 
general's wife sent round apples, looked at me 



WORK 73 

angrily, and said in French: "When these men 
join they don't want supper; the villages op- 
pose supper." She told me with irritation that 
a box of apples was lost. The man who said 
he was porridge-boiler thrust his head through 
the doorway, asking, "Will the foreign gentle- 
man have honey ?" He went to fetch the 
honey, but never returned. At the railway- 
station I met him in a uniform with red cuffs. 
On his arm was a black handkerchief with 
printed rosebuds, covering a girl's head. Prob- 
ably he remembered the honey, for he blushed 
as red as his cuffs. 

The soldiers, drilled and tramping to the 
Warsaw station, embodied the national spirit. 
They looked domestic and unsoldierly. They 
wore fawn overcoats, pleated behind, with long 
sleeves serving as gloves — in cold weather you 
join them in front; high boots wrinkled at the 
instep; soft caps, in winter busbies of sheep- 
skin; and fawn hoods. The coats and boots 
were good. The haversacks were like tourists' 
knapsacks; men in the new formations and 
men sent to refill the ranks had plain sacks kept 
in place by straps round the chest. Some units 
had haversacks of both kinds. The men were 
hung round with axes, spades, coils of rope, 
small bags of tobacco, kettles, saucepans; and 



74 COLOURS OF WAR 

they embraced chunks of bread. I heard them 
called "marching households." They were very 
heavily, very clumsily laden; but they walked 
well, apparently not to look martial, but to get 
ahead. 

The soldiers were ugly. In Petrograd you see 
thin, bearded men; in the forests of Vologda 
and Olonetz are good-looking, spiritual men; 
and there are droschky drivers who look like 
Nesteroff's saints. If these types are among 
the soldiers, they are crushed by the busbies, 
rifles, sacks, pots, kettles. The complexion was 
sallow. There were no rosy men like English- 
men, no flabby beer-pink faces of Prussia. 
Coats, hoods, and faces were nearly the same 
brown; everything but rifles and the shining 
pots looked made of baked mud. Many men 
had red noses, smallpox marks, skin eruptions, 
scars. Soldiers from the north had Teutonic 
fair hair; sometimes a weak Finnish fairness 
going with broad faces, thin beards, and eye- 
lids slightly oblique. Tartar faces were com- 
mon, and there were smooth faces which might 
be Greek. Isolation makes impossible a national 
blend. The figures were hidden. The loose 
overcoat, the shapeless hood, the knapsack, 
pots, kettles, bread covered everything up. 
You saw bundles, broad and not very high; the 



WORK 75 

contents, probably, were strong, gnarled, and a 
little bent. Some of the faces were sharp, more 
were empty; there were many immobile faces, 
the faces of men who are dead, but in health, 
The sharper faces had a self-centred look, as if 
the brains behind were thinking of fences and 
lawsuits, and not of war. I watched these men 
getting clumsily into the train for Warsaw; and 
could not think their thoughts were of Warsaw, 
much less of Berlin. This impression was not 
true of all. A Russian army has plain soldiers, 
who have their own views, groping but useful 
and sometimes exalted, of life; it has volun- 
teers who are inspired to fight for their country; 
and conscripts, who feel twice inspired, and 
have resolved not to fight at all. 



CHAPTER IV 
MESSIAH 

THE Russians, laughing at their inter- 
preters to Europe, tell of an English- 
man, settled ten years in Tver, who gave 
as reason for not writing a book that he did not 
want to be praised as "the well-known author- 
ity on the Tsar's Empire." He could not be 
praised and self-respecting. English dualism 
and the mutations of policy required, not art- 
ists with the many colours of life, but authori- 
tative monochrome painters of hero-mystics, or 
of savages fed on candles who snare wolves in 
the Kremlin. The fashion changed but remained 
extreme. The Russians distrust this dualism, 
dislike our new literature, which is full of it; 
and, were it not improved by translators, we 
should dislike theirs. 

Being timid compared with the interpreters, 
Russians will not express their country in a 
phrase. They admit that there are national 
moral traits, not to be found in all: there are 
kindliness, indolence, instability, ardour for 

brief heroism, more honesty in thought than 

76 



MESSIAH 77 

in action, and plenty of the virtue which most 
makes hope: 

"Russian life is an unbroken chain of faiths 
and infatuations. Unbelief, negation — these it 
has not even smelt. . . . Half of my life I have 
been Atheist or Nihilist; yet never was there an 
instant when I did not believe. . . . Mother 
made us children eat a lot; and, giving us din- 
ner, she said, 'Eat, children! There's nothing 
on earth like soup!' I believed. I ate soup 
ten times a day; I swallowed it, sharkwise, to 
the extreme of vomiting and repulsion. . . . 
As soon as I could read and understand, my 
beliefs went beyond description ... I joined 
robbers; I hired boys to torture me for Christ's 
sake. . . . When I learned that white light, 
which I thought was white, was composed of 
seven primary colours, my head went round. 
. . . Like a madman, I rushed about the house; 
I preached my truth to the stable boys; I 
flamed with hatred against men who saw in 
white light only white. ... I was infatuated 
without cease ... by ideas, by men, by events, 
by places. . . . And I did not believe like a 
German Doctor of Philosophy or live as a her- 
mit. My every faith bent me as a bow and 
tore my body to bits." 

In Petrograd lived an Englishman as long as 



78 COLOURS OF WAR 

the compatriot in Tver; and wrote a book. He 
was more Russian than Russia, therefore twice 
faithful to our cause; and he knew that every- 
thing conceivable that could make victory swift 
would happen beyond question and at once. He 
seized in the street men he had not seen for 
years, and whispered with passion, "Roumania 
is joining us this week ! " " How do you know ? " 
"By induction." When he changed induction 
for inspiration, he said that Providence sup- 
ported the right; he condemned as pro-Germans 
men who said that the Entente would have 
trouble because, though Providence supported 
the right, it sometimes gave victory to the side 
it did not support. This Englishman was the 
prophet of the war gospel of Russia. The men 
he lived among believed not as German doctors 
of philosophy, but in a way that tore them to 
bits. This resembled the confidence of England. 
But in Russia belief was free from make-belief, 
and it was coloured by emotions alien to our 
plain minds. 

On the surface Russia was like the other 
belligerent states. Quarrels of politics and of 
economy ceased; there were zeal for victory 
and ardour for self-sacrifice. The suspension 
of home quarrels meant much, because these 
were as embittered as with us, the cause being 



MESSIAH 79 

the same: the caprices of individuals were set 
above the law. A week before the crisis, Petro- 
grad saw strikes which recalled the first strikes 
of the Revolution. The Government killed 
fewer men and the strikers killed more. The 
omen of 1905 was not fulfilled. Revolution 
did not seize the war as a lever. Unity was 
nearly achieved. Outside unity were the Social 
Democrats and the Labour men. The Social 
Democrats threatened that the army would 
turn against the autocracy. Had they been 
sharper tacticians, they would have done as the 
German Socialists did: pronounced for the war, 
shared the credit of success, saying in case of 
defeat, "We told you so." Socialist agitation 
failed; the workmen ceased their strikes. In 
the Duma, except from the extreme Left, no 
opposition was raised. The masters of policy 
and rhetoric, the liberalising Intelligence, wel- 
comed the war more warmly than the Bureau- 
cracy, more warmly than the reactionaries, 
whose steadfastness has been doubted. The 
Black Hundreds and the Intelligents whom 
they used to murder forswore their feud; the 
Black Hundreds and Nationalists ceased to 
hate Poles and suspended hate of the Jews. 
The nation generally ceased quarrelling with 
the Bureaucracy and the Tsar. There were 



80 COLOURS OF WAR 

outbreaks of sincere good feeling, which in ar- 
dour and character resembled the fraternising 
of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews six 
years before. Faith was the cement in the new 
fraternity; when faith was shaken by defeat, 
dissensions returned. Reactionaries and pro- 
gressives accused one another of being respon- 
sible; the Government was violently attacked 
and threatened with revolution; the dormant 
Black Hundred and Anti-Semitic movements 
awoke alarmingly; and the old hatred between 
autocracy and working class led to a massacre 
in Kostroma. 

The causes of unity were several. One was 
Slav sentiment. Enthusiasts of Slav brother- 
hood upheld the Tsar's decision to champion 
Servia against Austria-Hungary. They desired 
annexation to the empire of Slav lands outside, 
thinking most of Polish and Ruthenian Austria 
and Polish Prussia. This was a small cause, or 
a great cause which counted with few. Foreign 
affairs are no great thing to Russians. For a 
century society has been absorbed in internal 
struggles. As the salient international interest, 
Pan-Slavism drew foreign notice. Being linked 
with reactionary Slavophilism, its power was 
limited at home. 

Dislike of Germany was another cause. Be- 



MESSIAH 81 

fore the war, Germans were not hated. Pro- 
gressives believed in the superiority of Europe 
without discrimination; seekers of health and 
pleasure crowded Germany; the Press, as in 
England, praised German science, the small 
extremes of wealth, the talent for living evenly 
and meanly which is foreign to the unthrifty 
Englishman and the expansive Slav. Slavo- 
philes of the traditional doctrine disliked Ger- 
many. They cherished the expansive spirit — 
the "wide nature," they said; and they ascribed 
to Germanic shackles Russia's ills. Disliked 
were the Germanised Court, the Germanised 
Bureaucracy, the Germanised University and 
Gymnasium. Russia could produce other, 
better things. The Westerners (the anti- 
Slavophile Zapadniki) admitted the ills; but 
said that Russia had taken only the bad sides 
of Europe. In the last years this dispute has 
been still. Dislike was caused by Germany's 
predominance in industry. Great values in 
German goods were imported. Though helped 
by high duties, Russians could not compete. 
German agents and travellers swarmed; their 
industry and knowledge gave them success. 
Competitors felt this as a grievance, as the 
Prussian agrarians felt a grievance in the im- 
port of Russian wheat. In both countries, the 



82 COLOURS OF WAR 

consumers profited. After the war began, the 
notion of the pushing, laborious German played 
a part in agitation. 

The chief cause of unity for war-making was 
that the war had come. Most believed that 
Russia would win; doubters had double reason 
to support the war. This is the way in all bel- 
ligerent countries. A great war obscures doubts 
as to its cause. Reasons are marshalled; but 
the reasons are the fruit of zeal for the war, and 
not the seed. Germans who did not want to 
champion Austria-Hungary support the war 
and find their reasons. The war is a struggle 
for life; and men will not condemn their coun- 
try to death because they question the acts of 
ministers: the penalty is too great; it falls on 
too many, and on the innocent. This is the 
nature of wars big enough to threaten national 
safety. The nation must win; unity in effort 
is necessary for winning; quarrels about the 
past impair unity in effort; success comes from 
unity; and success justifies any war. In Rus- 
sia as in England, the value of unity in the com- 
plex of factors making for success was over- 
measured. In other respects there is little in 
common between Russian unity in support of 
the war and British. 

Russia lacks the English homogeneity of 



MESSIAH 83 

thinking and feeling. Differences of race and 
education are great; differences within the same 
class of the same race are greater. To men 
from a nation made homogeneous by thick 
population, communications, and standard read- 
ing, Russian variety of thinking seems strange. 
The Russians have no common bond like the 
newspaper culture and sporting morals of Eng- 
land. Contrasts of wealth are less marked, 
though sharper than in Germany. The intel- 
lectual contrasts are great; there are more 
educated men with good taste than in England; 
and there are men who are more ignorant and 
insensible than the most backward Englishman. 
Marked differences of temperament impede 
standardisation. There is no compulsion on 
every man to think with every other. Though 
most Russians supported the war, and expected 
victory, their motives and their hopes differed. 
A great many had no motives but only hopes. 
These were the peasants and the backward 
workmen. The "Intelligence" had no unitary 
attitude towards the war. The distance be- 
tween one class of Intelligence and another was 
greater than the difference between either class 
and the "dark" moujik. 

A part of the Intelligence, which I shall call 
the political Intelligence, resembled the edu- 



84 COLOURS OF WAR 

cated in other belligerent countries. It com- 
prised men essentially European, who accepted 
in politics the principles, prejudices, and catch- 
words of Europe. Such men are officials, land- 
owners, merchants, lawyers, scholars, and a 
few workmen who in rising from the apathy 
and ignorance of their class sought principles, 
prejudices, and catchwords ready-made. They 
wanted healthy politics of every-day kind; they 
did not doubt that these politics were eternal 
truth; about the war they spoke as English- 
men, Germans, and Frenchmen speak. They 
had formulae of peace: the enemy would lose 
land, pay indemnities, and deliver to stronger 
legs his militarist jack-boots; Poland would 
be united and freed in everything but freedom 
to choose her lot. As to the measure of repara- 
tion and vengeance there were disputes. In 
the Novoye Vremya M. Mentschikoff said that 
all Germany should be annexed; and the Duma 
learned from a member that peace would be 
signed over Berlin's ashes and the Kaiser's 
bones. 

In other countries men who reason that way 
are not informed on the nature of war and 
policy; they are men without ideals. But 
Russia has few dull men; and as faith con- 
ditions idealism she has ideals without end. 



MESSIAH 85 

Visitors new to Russia saw with surprise in 
men whose thoughts revolved round embassies, 
cessions, indemnities, and prohibitions a pas- 
sion for betterment. Most political Intelligents 
were honest pacifists, who believed that blood- 
shed would cease with victory; armies would 
be maintained peacefully to keep workmen at 
peace; if only the worthiest victor nation had 
an army, the rest of mankind would be spared 
what rhetoric calls the crushing burden. These 
men believed in an absolute, providential equi- 
librium of land and race distribution, to be at- 
tained by victory and never more upset. They 
had hope of Europe's salvation, for all that 
Europe needs for salvation is the realisation of 
such plans as are realisable by the side that 
wins. 

In August, in September, indeed long after, 
the political Intelligents were absorbed in the 
policies of speedy victory. The war gave an 
impulse to thinking and writing as great as the 
impulse given by the revolution of 1905. The 
theme was: the fruits of victory. It was plain, 
in view of the greatness of both, that the ques- 
tion what will happen after victory, and the 
question of the means of victory, could not be 
settled at once. The customary order of the 
discussions was changed by faith. The measures 



86 COLOURS OF WAR 

after victory were settled well before Christmas ; 
a discussion of the means of victory began in 
June. Believers that war is decided by arms, 
not by programmes, saw defects in this in- 
version: there must have been hidden merits, 
as Russia's allies went the same way. 

All the measures proper after success, and 
many measures of doubtful propriety, were 
promulgated in the Press. In every street, in 
private houses, committees of citizens debated. 
At the house of my friend, M. Briantchaninoff, 
editor of a journal which refines Pan-Slav 
ambitions with true humanitarianism, meet- 
ings were held every week. I talked to many 
politicians, writers, professors. Had this been 
a first visit, surprise would have been caused 
by the high qualifications which Russians bring 
to the solution of problems far off. There were 
honesty, enthusiasm, sharp thinking, knowledge 
of history and constitutions; and an indus- 
try which let no point escape. The territorial 
gains were defined; extravagant men were re- 
buked by men with a sense of measure; under 
review passed the administration of the new 
provinces; the treatment of the new fellow 
subjects; the measure of tolerance of their 
languages, religions, and customs; and many 
points of economy. Russians are more critical 



MESSIAH 87 

than we; and there was none of the English 
unanimity. Only after real clashes of reason 
was it settled whether Poland should have 
homogeneous local government; whether the 
constitution of Poland should be octroye or 
agreed on by a Constituent Assembly and the 
Tsar in an irrevocable pact; whether Konigs- 
berg should be called Novo-Nikolaieff or be 
left as it is. 

The backing given by enlightened men to 
programmes in the race of programmes against 
circumstances was nothing new. It is a na- 
tional tenet that faith is absolute truth, and 
that facts are unreal and transitory. When 
the Premier Solypin was asked to cure the 
abuses by which he maintained his remarkable 
system, he consoled the importunate with a 
hearty: "What you say is dreadful! But 
Russia is all right! Whatever happens Russia 
will pull through! Believe in Russia!" He 
said, "Believe in Russia!" to men who com- 
plained of murders by police agents; and a 
week later a police agent murdered him. With 
successors this event no more shook faith that 
Russia would pull through than a cracked 
prism shakes faith in the structure of light. 
This steadfastness endured. A debating club 
of professors, calling itself "a group of friends," 



88 COLOURS OF WAR 

which I always attended with pleasure, was 
planning policy towards the Prussian Masurians 
when the news came that Hindenburg had de- 
stroyed a second army in Masuria. The plans 
went on. This transcendental attitude in- 
vested debates on concrete problems with the 
high qualities which, as a rule, only abstract 
thought has; and the men whom I have called 
political Intelligents were far more interesting 
than the intelligent politicians of England, Ger- 
many, and France. 

The other Intelligents had the same Russian 
faith; and they were Russian in the objects of 
hope. They were men of education who stood 
above the principles, prejudices, and catch- 
words which pass for policy in Europe, and 
men of less favoured classes who in struggling 
up from darkness had found ways of thought 
and feeling of their own. They were the un- 
political Intelligents. For the War they stood, 
but not for conventional policy. They had 
no respect for cessions, transfers of power, in- 
demnities. These things, they held, would not 
bring happiness and betterment; Russia has 
land enough; all their lives they had suffered 
from power: and money they chiefly know as 
the corruption of power. They were scholars, 
professional men, probably some bureaucrats, 



MESSIAH 89 

peasants, and workmen. They were men dis- 
contented with Russia, and in general with 
humanity, who thought that the gap between 
Russia and Europe is narrow compared with 
the gulf which divides Europe from ordered 
civilisation and happiness. 

These men wanted something better, to be 
quickly attained. They knew that this would 
not come from the old sources of betterment. 
Politics had been tried. For a century, the 
Intelligents watched Europe; and seeing that 
Europe was ahead and was political, reasoned 
that political inaction was the cause of Russia's 
ills. Neglecting other things, they made them- 
selves politicians; and made their programme 
the quickening in the people of political life. 
That meant fighting for political freedom, for 
constitutional guarantees. Ten years back, 
after defeat in war, the goal was reached; there 
were a few months of political freedom and 
action. But political action brought no salva- 
tion; it could not even save itself. Armed to 
the teeth with politics, the Intelligents wanted 
the other weapons, moral and intellectual, of 
power. They were mentally a sharp, but a 
gaseous, morally instable breed. From intel- 
lectual and moral starvation politics died, and 
freedom with it. (The book Marks — Viekhi 



90 COLOURS OF WAR 

— the work of a group of Intelligents, put 
bitterly the truth.) There was a reaction from 
politics. Some tried healthy living, some sport, 
debauchery, even thinking, and work — some 
tried all in succession; probably some tried all 
at once. No short cut was found to happiness. 
The Intelligents would not forswear the faith 
in short cuts. There was a feeling of expectancy, 
a feeling that all expedients had not been tried. 
Hypochondriacs like strong medicines: the 
war though not sought was welcomed. The 
war meant new suffering, and uncertainty; 
victory, indeed, was sure, but the fruits were 
not. The merit of the war was not what it 
would do but what it would undo. It was a 
break with the past; and nothing could be 
worse than the past. After scourging and 
thorns the pains of death are small; and death 
has prospects. In this despair and hope the 
war took a character which it lacks elsewhere. 
It is not a struggle for power; it is not a war, 
but the war, Armageddon, a judgment upon 
and renunciation of the past; a clearer of soil 
on which life worth living may grow. This 
Messianic hope of sudden transformation, 

" The world's great age begins anew," 
beckons to men who have lost faith in orderly 



MESSIAH 91 

progress. It is a Russian hope and old; it 
occurred to Slavophiles for whom the Russian 
spirit was the world's regenerating elixir; it 
relieves the quietist writings of Tchekhoff, 
where through strata of resignation and levity 
rise wells of prophecy of a good time which is 
to come, in some way left to the imagination 
at some undated day. 

These hopes were in a sphere which has no 
explorers and no terminology. Most unpolitical 
Intelligents could not say what great things 
could come from the war; some told what they 
expected, but did not say exactly what they 
meant. For want of a better, they took the 
language of the political Intelligents; and used 
it, refined but still too gross for their hope. 
They said the good time would be brought by 
Slav union, on the basis of pacifism, of con- 
stitutionalism, even of autocracy, a transfigured 
autocracy with bureaucrats expelled and direct 
relations established between people and Tsar. 
Ten years back, this transfigured autocracy 
was the reactionaries' one spiritual weapon; 
not being sincere, they argued it with bombs 
and knives: now a man who had been in gaol 
for preaching mild constitutionalism proclaimed 
that war would give autocracy the fructifying 
warmth for want of which it lay sterile. Some 



92 COLOURS OF WAR 

talked of the greatness of Russia — an absolute 
notion, self-realisation not dominance. Enemies 
were impersonal barriers to be pulled down. 
Self-realisation might be reached without vic- 
tory, by suffering, by renunciation, by mystical 
reactions. These hopes made possible the sup- 
port of the war as an event, an experience, 
apart from the faith in victory. No acquisi- 
tions, no indemnity would repay Russia; but 
if Russia knew herself, the war would be won. 
By this some men who, doubting programmes, 
doubted in victory were brought to support 
the war. The burden of the complaint, the 
justification of the war as Armageddon, was 
that nothing had changed for the better since 
the war with Japan; if nothing had changed, 
why be surer of victory now than then? 

The emancipated peasants and workmen, 
whom I class with the unpolitical Intelligence, 
thought in their own way. Their way is easier 
to follow, but not easy. Physical work makes 
physical thinking. Symbols and generalities 
mean things to the worker; presentiments 
►seek sensible shapes. The "emblem of union 
of Tsar and people," the new flag, was taken 
as a reality; word went round about a mirac- 
ulous "Tsar's paper," which would make union; 
peasants, reasoned some, would have freedom, 



MESSIAH 93 

food, and clothing as the Tsar has. Believers 
that the war would change the world watched 
out for change. They projected new things, 
new men, and they set to work to find them. 
In the forests and marshes, the old homes 
of Messianic expectation, there was ferment. 
Prophets came out; signs burned in the sky; 
strange finds were made in queer spots; old 
men, from prayers in the cells of forgotten 
monasteries, came back with mysterious faces, 
to proclaim that things were going to happen 
at last. 

In this, as it sprang up in many places, there 
was confusion; what was the gospel, who the 
prophets were, no one knew. There was the 
salient legend of Antichrist, who must be beaten 
that Christ might reign. For ages Christ had 
tarried. As Pole, as Turk, as Swede, as Frank, 
as Briton, Antichrist had come; now he had 
come as German — as Swabian; this was the 
last time of Antichrist; and man would be 
free. Some told of earthly prophets, reviled 
when Europe was fat, whose day would come 
when beaten Europe sought new consolation. 
In the forests round Ilmen, the prophet Kol- 
basa (his name means sausage) taught that 
humility and poverty would be the new law — 
plausibly in a war that will leave little wealth 



94 COLOURS OF WAR 

and pride. Russia, whose people, not having 
either, despise both, would guard the law. 
Every man would get a kitchen-garden. No 
one knew Kolbasa; he became invisible, like 
the legendary city Kitezh in Rimsky-Korsa- 
koff's opera; his forerunner, a Minsk shepherd, 
found in milk-shops on Basil Island, rebuked 
doubt with the image, "You can see through 
water, but it's there." He promised that 
greater things would happen soon than ever 
have happened before, and counselled, "Wait !" 
Of sensible profits from the war the shepherd 
had no notion except that "the vodka prohibi- 
tion is a good thing, though the holiest men 
are drunkards." The war was "the end of 
Europe." He would go no further. His looks 
implied that the end of Europe is nothing so 
mean as political regeneration; it is something 
harder to grasp, not to be talked of lightly, of 
real importance to men. 

These hopes, with some national colouring, I 
found in Poland, where a history sadder than 
even Russia's has kept Messiah in the mind. 
They are not peasant hopes; they are the 
hopes of the elect in the small peasant Intel- 
ligence. The "dark" people had no ordered 
reasoning. They had faith, like the Intel- 
ligence, in success and in gains; like the In- 



MESSIAH 95 

telligence, they had no notion of the mecha- 
nism of success; and the gains expected were 
grosser than humility, grosser even than kitchen- 
gardens. Their war philosophy was a tangle 
of facts, prejudices, and superstitions; inquiry 
was like visiting a museum of everything in 
which no order is kept. Men were at work to 
make the people "conscious"; but the fruits 
— as I saw in the provinces of Petrograd and 
Pskoff — were not ripe. The tour was made 
in Serftember; the flimsy villas where Petro- 
grad spends summer were closed; the sky was 
grey; weedy birches shivered near unmade 
roads; the land was soaked by the autumn 
rains which wash the nightless summers quickly 
into winters without day; the Tannenberg ca- 
tastrophe had damped the first hope of vic- 
tory. I had been here before, and found little 
change. There were the same delays; the same 
carts with wabbling wheels — this time the 
driver thought he heard guns; and the same 
stucco manor-house with mezzanine — this time 
the owner's sons had perished. The stories 
were the old : the Zemstvo had sold Michailovka 
iron roofs; Michailovka paid fire premiums; 
the police had carried off Emelyan. Faith, 
too, was the same: things are best left alone; 
thatches are cheaper than iron ; though Emelyan 



96 COLOURS OF WAR 

killed his wife he was unlucky; he had a good 
heart; wheels will not come off carts because 
God put them on. The cabins were still untidy, 
clean, and overrun by the old cockroaches or 
their children; there were still samovars, wooden 
spoons, varnished and plain, a stove which is 
the elders' bed. A rich peasant had a German 
sewing-machine; there were "wretched pic- 
tures" dealing with war; some pages with 
photographs from English journals; a litho- 
graph of a branching tree with Arabic text 
which gave Mahomet's descent. The com- 
mune council still met in the open. Ten years 
ago the peasants had sons in Port Arthur; 
now they had sons in Kovno. Two sons had 
returned, each less an arm; and the commune 
questioned them. One hero told vaingloriously 
how he had fought after losing his arm; the 
other said with more truth and art, "The 
Prussians shot it off — that's all." The man 
came with me along the muddy road, and told 
me of his eight brothers. The council forgot 
him: it turned to the problem: will foreign 
nails be excluded by the Tsar? 

Making the peasants "conscious" was the 
work of the landowner whose sons had perished. 
A dining-cabin, got ready for reservists on the 
way to depot, was also library. A peasant 



MESSIAH 97 

woman dealt soup with a spoon, and porridge 
with the hand, and a schoolmistress dealt out 
books and papers; peasants studied a draw- 
ing of Germans carousing while a priest was 
being shot; there were Orange Books, and 
two pamphlets, one written for peasants. The 
pamphlets were graded for the readers' brains; 
the stupid peasants learned that the army 
supply suffers from bad roads and they were 
advised to make roads; the clever Intelligence 
was told that the Prussians once were Slavs 
and must be made Slavs again. The darkest 
peasants had heard of Germans and Turks; 
some had heard of Frenchmen; the number of 
very dark was small. Every one knew that 
Russia would win. There was a lantern slide, 
"Russians Defending 302 Metre Hill" at Port 
Arthur; it was shown during lectures on the 
Polish campaign. A good-looking peasant took 
me round, telling me of a German who had 
left three weeks before. He had a grain store. 
The peasants long debated whether to pay him 
their debts; they paid. He was not a real 
German, only a German subject; Russian was 
his language. "What happened to him?" 
"He was arrested at Glashevo, and sent to 
Petrograd. He could go as prisoner of war to 
Vologda, Viatka, or Orenburg. He was warned 



98 COLOURS OF WAR 

against Viatka, but he went there. He was a 
kind man, obstinate, who drank and had hun- 
dreds of cushions." 

We drove past his house, two-storied, clean, 
and empty. The driver still heard the guns. 
Over Petrograd province, he said, airships flew, 
they were painted to resemble clouds, so they 
were invisible like the prophet Kolbasa and the 
city Kitezh. Near the railway-station a woman 
lay in the road. "She sleeps in the first place 
God pointed out." "How do women take the 
war?" "They hate Germans. The Germans 
sell cheap goods and spoil village industries, 
and they extort high prices. The village wo- 
men help. Rich women in the towns sew muf- 
flers and make up boxes of chocolate. They 
forget that these may be taken by the Germans, 
who want food and clothes. The village women 
pray." "Pray for the defeat of the Germans?" 
"They pray for what they want." The driver 
knew that Russia was big and that she must 
win. That is the peasant's gleam of consequent 
thought. He expected gains. After peace the 
peasants would not return to drink. They 
drink because nails are dear. "When a man 
has cheap nails he does all sorts of work, and 
doesn't think of vodka." Wheels come off 
carts because iron is scarce. If the Germans 



MESSIAH 99 

were beaten there would be no foreign iron; 
Russians would make nails in plenty, and sell 
them cheap. Messiah as a vendor of nails did 
not surprise me. It came from the dark; what 
had come from the enlightened exhausted sur- 
prise. 



CHAPTER V 
WARSAW 

IN the train to Warsaw were brothers, 
Poles, whose villa at Prushkow, the limit 
of Hindenburg's autumn advance, was 
burned. They came from the Oka River two 
thousand miles east, with the news that the 
Oka was more intent on the war than the Vis- 
tula. Absorption in people far off, and indif- 
ference in people near, I found elsewhere. We 
travelled in the slow, unclean, dark train called 
"passenger" to distinguish it from the "courter" 
train with carriages of the Wagons Lits, which 
gets to Warsaw in eighteen hours. The pas- 
senger train takes thirty hours; mine, as troops 
were being moved to meet a surprise, took 
fifty. The other passengers were officers. They 
wore short sheepskin coats, with the skin and 
a rim of wool outside, sheepskin busbies, and, 
underneath the coats, unmartial blouses of 
khaki. The blouses matched the pince-nez, 
the pillows, mufflers, Thermos flasks, the soft 
features, the soft incessant voices, the endless 

tea-drinking — things which in spite of autoc- 

100 



WARSAW 101 

racy, corruption, and fifty other ills, blow a 
homely domestic wind over the Russian land. 

The Poles, sharp-faced men, unlike Russians 
and proud of it, said that Warsaw was panic 
tempered by dance. The panic declined as 
time passed since the autumn raid: there was 
dance because people could not suspend dance 
for the endless days that the war will last, be- 
cause Warsaw is frivolous, because the Vistula, 
neither hoping nor fearing much, is mentally 
farther off than the Oka. Citizens with real 
talents for anxiety had fled. The citizens who 
stayed were amusing themselves; having seen 
how harmlessly Hindenburg faded after his 
first visit, they did not mind if he came again. 
Alarmist rumours were thinning; the city now 
heard not more than once a week that the Civil 
Government had fled, and that the bridges were 
blown up at dawn. 

On October the 11th, the advance guard of 
a German army got within two hours' walk of 
Sobieski's palace. For a week, guns rever- 
berated; the windows rattled, and some broke. 
The civil authorities, not knowing whether the 
town would be held or abandoned, prepared 
to flee, and some fled. Money was taken from 
the Bank of State; schools, the chief theatres, 
and many shops closed; and there were days 



102 COLOURS OF WAR 

without bread. From stations on the right bank, 
citizens made for Moscow, Kieff, and Petro- 
grad. They crowded on the roofs of carriages 
and fell off. The left bank railway stations 
were closed. With battle so near, reinforcements 
and supplies do not go by rail. On the ninth 
day, when the enemy might have entered the 
town, the gun-thunder ceased, and Hinden- 
burg's legions went. 

Warsaw is entered through the ill-paven, 
dirty, but European not Russian, suburb Praga. 
The streets of Praga were camps of troops and 
waggons, all of Russian, leisurely and domestic, 
kind. The station at midnight was guarded 
by one sleepy sentry: otherwise, there was 
nothing like war. I contrasted Berlin, far from 
the front, where, ten minutes after martial 
law was proclaimed, the meanest stations were 
guarded by sentries, posted with numberless 
notices, and closed to all but travellers. The 
Vistula river first showed the precautions of 
war. Troops and transport crossed the Alex- 
ander Bridge; peaceful traffic went by the 
southern bridge which joins Praga with the 
Jerusalem Alley and the Vienna station. On 
the embanked approaches and at the porches 
policemen and sentries watched; on the bridge, 
a quarter of a mile long, there were sentries 



WARSAW 103 

every dozen yards. Traffic was controlled. 
Walkers who held their hands in their pockets 
got the order " Hands up!" and a rifle was 
levelled. Hands in the pockets meant bombs. 
Parcels drew suspicion. Horses were walked. 
If they walked too quickly, policemen and 
sentries bawled; if the horses were not slowed 
down, down came the rifles. Sometimes, to 
cross the bridge and embankments took half 
an hour. Half way across, the aim of the 
precautions was shown. In the roadway was 
a hole; into it, from a tripod crane, a taut 
chain went. Vibration from traffic was dan- 
gerous, because the bridge was mined. The 
central Alexander Bridge was also mined, but 
there was no hole; the northern bridge, crossed 
by the railway, was mined too. Early in Au- 
gust, when a coup de main was expected, the 
mines were laid. 

On the left bank, Warsaw was all war. The 
streets were so full of battalions, guns, trans- 
port, wounded, nurses, that civilian Warsaw 
was crushed. The clean town, kept quiet by 
real pavement, became the dirtiest, the noisiest. 
As months passed things got worse. The first 
concentration, behind the Vistula, was on a 
broad front; parts of the army crossed the river 
above and below the town; and there was no 



104 COLOURS OF WAR 

congestion. Later, the city became the central 
ganglion of communications. Everything, ma- 
terial and men, that went to battle entered 
Praga, crossed a bridge, and left the west of 
the town by the double-tracked railways which 
go to Lowitsch and Skierniewice. All day long, 
sometimes at night, down the Cracow suburb 
and the Nowy Swiat tramped regiments of 
shaggy, broad-faced men, many bringing to 
Europe's martial domesticity the pots, kettles, 
cans, ropes of Asia. Dirt came from the un- 
ending trains of carts; guns and limbers, hung 
in as homely a way as the men were with pots 
and kettles, made the noise. How many men, 
how many shells, loaves, coats, pots and kettles, 
passed through, no one knew. There were 
enough to disorder more orderly men than 
Russians. But order was kept. Traffic was 
stopped, but never mixed; the men entrained 
comfortably without much meddling by officers; 
and nobody made haste or lost breath. Even 
the regrouping, the movement of troops to meet 
new crises, was done with calm. This is the 
advantage, sometimes the great disadvantage, 
of Russia's conduct of war. 

Civilian life, judged by streets and hotels, 
was unchanged, except that it was pushed aside. 
Citizens seemed to live their own lives, and the 



WARSAW 105 

war to live its life. Those who had work to do 
found that this was not really so. The town had 
a makeshift administration. Officials who fled 
in October did not all return; they took away 
money, papers, and seals; and some who came 
back came without them. One post office and 
one telegraph office were open, working badly. 
Letters to Petrograd took a week; they went, 
some said, to an internal censor at Vilna. 
Citizens made their own posts and telegraphs. 
Pan this or Pan that, newspapers announced, 
would leave to-morrow for Moscow; he would 
execute commissions at reasonable rates. 
Couriers came from Russia with satchels of 
letters; loungers at the Hotel Bristol took 
telegrams to train conductors, who took them 
farther; such telegrams arrived before the 
telegrams which had to compete with army 
correspondence on the wires. 

Money, except in hotels and visitor quarters, 
was scarce. When the war began gold dis- 
appeared. Paper followed. In the northwest 
quarter and in Praga even brown-backed one 
rouble notes and silver half roubles were rare. 
The owners hid them in yards, in chimneys, 
and under floors; those who intended to run 
if the Germans came back sewed money in 
their boots. On an inlet near the Cuirassier 



106 COLOURS OF WAR 

barracks, I saw men fishing from a boat; on 
the bank a woman gesticulated, threatening to 
jump in. The crowd said that an air bomb, 
aimed at the barracks, had fallen into the river. 
It would be fished up for examination. The 
police said that the woman, to save her bag of 
silver, had thrown it into the water; and now 
she wanted it out. 

For a town besieged on one side, and prac- 
tically besieged on the other, railway freight 
traffic having ceased, living conditions were 
good. Hotels charged the old prices for rooms, 
and raised slightly the price of food. Neces- 
saries were a fourth dearer than in peace time; 
some necessaries were no dearer than in Moscow; 
and some things not necessaries were cheap. 
Coffee cost twelve shillings a pound, and tea 
eight shillings. Even in March, when railways 
were more congested, and stores had diminished, 
there was food for all who could pay prices 
moderately high. Some manufactured things 
were not to be had. From want of fuel manu- 
facturing industry had ceased; but credit was 
plentiful; and in objects of luxury trade went 
well. In the Jewish quarter trade was carried 
on with I.O.U.'s; later, the Jews printed notes 
of one rouble and fifty kopecks, and these were 
accepted at face value. 



WARSAW 107 

Martial law, as elsewhere, was in force; but 
it was no more obtrusive than in Petrograd. 
At first, lights were extinguished at eleven; 
later the town was lighted all night; this con- 
trasted, though the danger from the sky was 
great, with London. There was no rule against 
going out at night. Bars, cabarets, and dance- 
halls were closed, not by army order, but be- 
cause no drink might be sold. The prohibition 
covered beer; allowing for human nature and 
spirituous furniture polish, of which others than 
joiners died, it was well observed. Hotels were 
occupied by staff officers; regimental officers 
on relief, with wives, mothers, and sisters; 
Sisters of Mercy; civilian hangers on of the 
army; and good-looking, refined country gentle- 
men whpse houses were ashes. The theatres 
and biograph halls were open. The theatres 
avoided war plays. The biographs presented 
The Hound of the Baskervilles, making English- 
men proud. The sweet shops showed shrapnel 
shells of chocolate. In the streets and cafes 
were many well-dressed women. The war 
ladies, called with humour Cousins of Mercy, 
who flocked to Kharbin and Port Arthur in 
the last war, stayed away. The army was 
serious. Officers and soldiers behaved well. 
All that happened at the greatest base town 



108 COLOURS OF WAR 

indicated that the gravity of the crisis was 
felt. 

In the months after Hindenburg's raid, pris- 
oners and aeroplanes were all that was seen of 
the enemy. The cafe experts said that no 
enemy aircraft had come, that no bombs were 
thrown: Germans hid on roofs, and dropped 
bombs which the simple believed to come from 
heaven. This was untrue. In the first four 
months three hundred bombs fell in town, on 
the railways around, or in the forts. Forty fell 
in August. When the Germans were near, 
many more fell; the Hotel Polonia was wrecked; 
at midnight it rained fire in the Marzalkowska 
Street; the Vienna station, the Brest station, 
and the embankment of the loop line were 
hit. In these months seventy civilians suf- 
fered. The airmen dropped notes appointing 
the next meeting, and warning citizens to stay 
indoors. At first, the morning was chosen: 
later, from twelve to two; in the fortnight after 
Christmas, the evening. On an airman, shot 
down, were found instructions. Bombs were 
not to be dropped in forts quickly in succes- 
sion, but with intervals, so that more than 
one panic might be caused; the airmen should 
bomb all forts in order, and return to the first. 
Aviators attacking bridges should fly along the 



WARSAW 109 

bridges; when attacking unroofed railway sta- 
tions, they should aim at water-towers, signal- 
boxes, and turntables. 

A week after arrival, I saw the damage and 
panic which air attacks caused. A vessel 
lighter than air which may have been a Zep- 
pelin crossed the Powarsky suburb, and aimed 
bombs at railway stations and military maga- 
zines. Around it, apparently as guards, were 
aeroplanes. A Taube detached itself, flew 
across the Nowy Swiat Street, and made every 
one, except some Siberian artillerists, run into 
shops. There was an explosion. The same 
Taube dropped a bomb and broke windows at 
the Kowel station. Later, the forts were at- 
tacked, and, under volleys of shrapnel — our 
reply to air attacks — photographs were taken. 
Russian aeroplanes rose from the flats east of 
Praga, and attacked. The airship went west. 
On this day seven bombs were thrown, and nine 
civilians were hurt. A single aeroplane bombed 
the railway at Novo-Minsk. It was struck by 
bullets, and forced to descend, and was sur- 
rounded by peasants. The cargo of bombs 
exploded, and put an end to airmen and peas- 
ants. From near the Alexander Bridge I saw 
an attack by Taubes. The Taubes appeared 
as specks, flew east, and under fire from Fort 



110 COLOURS OF WAR 

Sliwnicki aimed bombs at the railway bridge. 
The bridge was a target once a week. The air- 
men, made nervous by rifle fire and shrapnel 
from the bridge-head fort, always missed. In 
November fell bombs, proclamations, and books. 
The books were works of art. The best was 
The Resurrection of Poland. On the cover a 
blue-robed Virgin with Child looked mildly; 
beside the Virgin in medallions were the Kaiser 
and Pope Leo XIII; beneath, peasants and a 
German soldier prayed; inside were coloured 
drawings of Poland's sorrows at Russia's hands; 
and on the first page was a Hymn to the Virgin : 

SALVE, REGINA! 

"Witaj Krolowa, Matko litosci! 
Nasza nadziejo, zycia slodkosci. 
Witaj Maryo, Matko jedyna, 
Matko nas ludzi — Salve, Regina !" 

There was less art in the leaflet Soldatshoe 
Dielo (The Soldier's Business). It was printed 
on pink paper rimmed with thick cardboard to 
make it fall; it proved that it is not a soldier's 
business to fight. The pamphlets in Polish 
were well written; Russian works, not so well. 
Russian airmen scattered pamphlets in German, 
Magyar, and the Slav languages of Austria. 

Bombs, and stories of bombs, caused some 



WARSAW 111 

panics. When bombs threatened, working men 
made for the stations of the eastern railways. 
Crowds gathered in the Saxon Garden, to avoid 
bombs supposed to be aimed at the building 
of the Warsaw Military District. The airmen 
strewed leaflets. Next morning, traffic in the 
Jerusalem Alley ceased; women dropped par- 
cels; and carters abandoned carts. The cause 
was a friendly biplane. Workmen who lived 
near the threatened railway stations of Praga 
fled to Warsaw. On the bridge, they met a 
stream of men and women bound for Praga. 
An airman had bombed the Vienna station. 
Imagination caused many panics. At Bura- 
kow, north of the town, I found furniture in 
the road. An invalid woman lay on a cottage 
piano, turned on its side. Children screamed, 
looking up at nothing. Mounted policemen 
dispersed the crowd. The fright was caused 
by the rattle of transport over cobbles. Fright- 
ened men telephoned to the centre that the 
Germans had come, and the panic spread. The 
well-to-do and educated seldom showed fear; 
when aeroplanes appeared, they took shelter in 
leisurely, dignified way. 

Citizens who escaped rending by bombs had 
a chance to hang as spies. Many spies were 
executed, some said five a day. Of all towns in 



112 COLOURS OF WAR 

the Eastern theatre Warsaw is best for spies. 
It is half German. The stamp taken when it 
was Prussian, when it was dynastically tied 
with Saxony, remains. There is a Briihl Hotel, 
also a Saxon Garden; in architecture German 
influence is marked: a little cleansing would 
reproduce the old part of Berlin. The three 
hundred thousand Jews speak German or 
Yiddish-German. Many enemy subjects re- 
mained; the system of registration and expul- 
sion was loose. In February there was still 
talk of expelling Germans. There were Swiss 
Germans, and other neutral Teutons. The 
administration was German. The Governor 
(captured at Kutno) was a Korff, his successor 
a Grosser, the Vice-Governor an Essen, the 
police-master a Meyer, the senior police as- 
sessor an Utthoff, the mayor a Mtiller; high 
positions were held by Behrlands, Tittens, 
Scheppings, Schillers, Burmanns, Reiters, Petzes, 
and Kriihls. The name Schmidt no more drew 
suspicion than the name Mickiewicz. As the 
funnel through which the armies passed, the 
town was attractive for spies. Spies seek first 
to learn the dispositions of troops; they had 
only to see the shoulder-straps of the columns 
which crossed the bridges. The small towns 
west and southwest of Warsaw are largely Jew- 



WARSAW 113 

ish and German speaking. This made it easy 
for spies to reach the enemy's lines. 

Before retreating in October the German Staff 
prepared for espionage. Officers dressed as Jew 
peddlers stayed behind; trustworthy Germans 
and Russian subjects were given carrier pigeons 
and signalling apparatus; and telephones were 
laid underground. During our occupation, 
Skierniewice was a centre of spies whose names 
are known. They are now out of reach. Spies 
infested Brest-Litovsk, Rovno, and Bielostock. 
They telephoned to their employers in the west. 
Bottles with plans floated down the Warthe to 
the enemy's positions. From tree-tops signals 
were made; helioscopes and mirrors flashed 
news from rooms; and peasants, driving their 
cattle or hanging their washing in ways prear- 
ranged, gave facts to airmen. Jews were able 
spies; their motive was not always money; 
sometimes it was hatred of Russia, and hope 
to come under Germany or Austria. Many 
Jews were hanged; and from some towns as a 
precaution all Jews were driven. I saw two 
good-looking young Germans, probably officers, 
marched past the Bristol Hotel. Soldiers be- 
hind guarded a box of signalling apparatus, 
which had been used on a hillock. The spies 
were hanged in the Citadel. They carried 



114 COLOURS OF WAR 

forged Russian passports, with imitations of 
police registration stamps. Some spies were 
women, German, Jewish, and Polish. A gov- 
erness, half Polish, was executed. She went 
with a Committee to Petrokow to help sick 
refugees. In December, when the Austrians 
advanced, the Committee left. Pleading illness, 
the girl remained. She was seen in hiding. 
Papers with military facts were found. The spy 
had joined the Committee in order to get to 
the Austrians. She had men accomplices in 
Radom, and refused to give their names. 

For three weeks of the Lodz operations, dur- 
ing the highest tension of battle, a hundred 
thousand wounded were in the town. Before 
Lodz, and after, there were fewer; but the 
stream never ceased. During the lull of Feb- 
ruary and March, five hundred came daily. 
The badly wounded were taken in trams or 
Red Cross carts; the lightly wounded, under 
care of nurses, walked through the streets in 
groups of six or eight. The wounded were got 
away in order, and great care was taken; but 
there were not enough instruments and stores; 
improvised nurses learned by experience. As 
at Petrograd hospitals, I found that most 
wounds, and the worst, were from shells: after 
battles in the open, there were many shrapnel 



WARSAW 115 

wounds. The badly wounded were comforted, 
and those bound for death died decently. 
They merited less compassion than the lightly 
wounded, than the long, un-Christian proces- 
sions of men in pain, maimed for life, and con- 
scious of their misery. 

In hospital were wounded women, Russian, 
Austrian, and German. Some were victims of 
air-bombs; romancers turned them all into sol- 
diers. Of enemy women-soldiers I saw nothing; 
I heard stories, mostly hard to believe. Russia 
had many Amazons — a Moscow lady said four 
hundred; they had the devotion of NekrasofTs 
Russian Women, and the nerves of men. Some 
personated reservists, giving the names of dead 
men and shirkers — I heard of wives rebuking 
shirker husbands by shouldering guns. Men who 
had not to serve were induced to submit to the 
army examination; when they were passed, 
women took their places. Hoping to become 
soldiers, young women ran from home. Some 
were found out and sent home; some still serve. 
A masculine brunette, Uglicki, entered East 
Prussia with the Vilna army, and survived the 
battle of Masuria and the retreat. She said 
that she felt no fear; the first reaction against 
war was in a bayonet charge, when she saw that 
she might have to kill. On the Nida fought a 



116 COLOURS OF WAR 

Lithuanian woman, a scarred veteran, who had 
killed Hunghuses. There were women Cossacks. 
The soldiers treated women comrades with con- 
tempt, not deserved. The women equalled the 
men in marching, fighting, and morale. 

Prisoners passed through the town every day. 
There were no surrenders in units; the groups 
that came from the trains were stragglers, 
shirkers, and odd men caught in outpost fights, 
mostly well-dressed, healthy men. The en- 
emies were on good terms. There were Poles 
from Prussia, who made themselves understood 
with fragments of Slav, woda (water), piwo 
(beer), chleb (bread). Russians learned Polish 
quickly. Each side regarded the other with 
condescension. The Germans watched the 
shaggy Russians with awe, with the feeling 
that here was something inferior, barbarous, 
and incomprehensible; the Russians looked 
at the prisoners ironically, reasoning that they 
were not much worth if they had to be eked 
out with ladylike haversacks, finicky drinking- 
glasses, and ostentatiously tailored clothes. 
Contempt inspires kindness : the Germans 
grinned at the Russians; and the makhorka 
(tobacco), brought by Polish ladies, was shared 
with the unfortunate. The Germans tried the 
tobacco, and looked as if they now first knew 



WARSAW 117 

the woes of captivity. The Russians gave them 
cigarettes. The thin cigarettes were better. 
The prisoners broke them, stuffed the thready 
tobacco in their pipes, and smoked it away in 
two draws. The enemies said good-bye. The 
Germans saluted; the Russians saluted; some 
Russians lifted their caps, as if they were not sol- 
diers but peasants at home, and bowed very low. 
With soldiers, wounded, and prisoners mak- 
ing a floating population were many refugees. 
Some came in summer before the first invasion; 
Some came when Hindenburg was near Prush- 
kow; some in December after the battle of 
Lodz. The first refugees were from Kalisch; 
the second from all parts of left- Vistula Poland; 
the last from the province of Petrokow, and 
from the villages on the Bsura and Rawka. In 
Russia there were refugees from Warsaw. Fifty 
thousand fled in October; some returned when 
the enemy retreated; some fled again when 
guns on the Bsura were heard in the suburbs. 
Many fled without cause, or because of the 
favourite legend: "The Civil Government has 
left." Stories were told of free tickets to Mos- 
cow; and the poor rushed to the Brest station 
and returned in tears. Refugees from the west 
were hungry, in rags, cold, exhausted, some- 
times wounded. Some were suspect Jews, sent 



118 COLOURS OF WAR 

from the front. The Jews, mostly traders, 
crowded the quarter near the Krasinski Garden. 
The Christians — peasants and country gentle- 
men — were everywhere. A priest who led 
from Petrokow his hungry flock took me to a 
camp near the Governor's summer residence. 
The refugees had brought carts with rugs and 
utensils; they dug holes, turned the carts on 
their sides to windward, and stretched the rugs 
overhead. Life for davs was between an earthen 

■ 

floor and a rug. Compared with the most un- 
fortunate, thev lived well. 

Country gentlemen arrived, hungry but calm. 
Southwest of the town, an old-fashioned car- 
riage passed me. It was drawn by good horses, 
with postilions, and moved east with eighteenth- 
centurv state. Gentlemen remembered thev 
were gentlemen. I met one from Kalisch who 
brought a domestic priest and twelve servants, 
who were paid their wages in German requisition 
notes. His chief estate was in East Prussia; 
about it he told me a droll, a Prussian story. 
When war began he was in Kalisch; his German 
affairs were let slide; and with pain he remem- 
bered that he owed income tax, and that his 
marquetry tables would be seized. He sent his 
children to Warsaw, but stayed on the land, 
hoping the German connection would help him 



WARSAW 119 

to save the house. The German Commandant 
asked who he was, made notes, gave him pro- 
tection, and all went well. A month later, a 
field postman brought a demand for payment 
of income tax, plus forty pfennigs fine for delay. 
Distraint, said a memorandum, has been tried 
on your East Prussia property, but nothing 
saleable was found. The house had been burnt 
to the ground. 

The politicians of Warsaw lazily watched 
events. The relations between Russians and 
Poles could not be judged; demonstrations may 
be made only in favour of the side in possession. 
The Poles were friendly to the soldiers. In the 
shops were picture postcards showing Russians 
and Poles locked in embrace. The recognised 
newspapers were Russophile, with different de- 
grees of warmth. Moral preparation had not 
been made for war. When the war began, the 
Petrograd Nationalists were deep in plans, on 
the late M. Stolypin's lines, for the humiliation 
and further dismemberment of Poland; and 
their repentance, though perhaps sincere, could 
not bear fruit at once. Fraternity counts with 
unity as a moral factor of war which may not 
be improvised. The proclamation of the Grand 
Duke Nicholas, promising Poland union and 
Home Rule, was handled tepidly and irreso- 



120 COLOURS OF WAR 

lutely. The Poles who welcomed it wanted a 
legally binding pledge. For a year nothing was 
done to redeem the Grand Duke's promise; 
after the spring defeats, when Poland was as 
good as lost, a commission met to decide what 
form of government should be given not only 
to Russian Poland, but also to Austrian and 
Prussian Poland. This policy of belated pro- 
grammes caused complaints in the Duma. The 
pro-Russian section of the Poles had hoped 
that the Tsar would come to Warsaw and pledge 
his word. The Russian practice is to take with 
one hand what is given with the other. Bu- 
reaucrats, grown old in the notion that suspicion 
and hatred are the normal relation of ruled to 
rulers, dread more than bombs the exuberance 
of reconciliation. When Home Rule for re- 
united Poland was proclaimed, a Petrograd 
editor, my friend, wrote essays full of honest 
Slav brotherliness, with no politics. The cen- 
sor suppressed them as too friendly to the 
Poles. This was a month after the proclama- 
tion. A few weeks later the proclamation, sold 
in Russia and praised in Europe, had disap- 
peared from Warsaw; wise men feared it might 
corrupt the Poles into gratitude; and the Poles 
were reading The Resurrection of Poland, which 
dropped from the German sky. 



WARSAW 121 

Disputes as to the right policy of Poles, im- 
possible in public, went on under ground. 
Against lawful Polish publications of Russophile 
colour and Russian publications, friendly but 
not too friendly to Poles, agitators secretly 
printed journals and pamphlets. The Glos 
Wolny preached that Poland would be better 
off in disunion than in union under the Tsar. 
The Polish Socialists and some peasant organi- 
sations seemed to take this view. The agitators 
raged against the Russian Polish Legion started 
by M. Dmowski and M. Gorczynski; Poles 
called up as reservists, or invited to join the 
legion, were advised to fly to Cracow and join 
the rival legion of the Supreme National Com- 
mittee. The Russian party, after long troubles, 
got permission to form a Polish National Com- 
mittee. There was a secret anti-Russian Polish 
confederation. Many arrests were made. Most 
Poles, I believe, want reconstruction and inde- 
pendence; having no hope of these, they cry a 
plague on both your houses. Some demonstrate 
for the side for the time being on top ; and when 
the side on top goes under, they change with 
good faith and Slav facility. In Galicia a few 
Poles and Little Russians welcomed the in- 
vader; after Gorlice-Tarnow all acclaimed the 
Austrian deliverer. The town of Pabianice, in 



lm COLOURS OF WAR 

Russian Poland, was fined for welcoming the 
Germans; it showed such honest joy at the Rus- 
sian return that the fine was remitted. 

With the richer Poles economic factors 
counted. Maybe these men would not have 
set their interest above the race's cause; but 
they were cynical and incredulous; they awaited 
no alleviation; and without selfishness they 
could hope at least to be spared material ruin. 
The Lodz and Warsaw manufacturers (except 
the half-Germans, and the Jews whose hatred 
transcends pocket motives) wished for the re- 
tention of Poland by Russia. Russian Poland 
is in great part a country of industry; in ef- 
ficiency of production, being directed by Ger- 
mans, it stands above Russia; and it sells, be- 
hind a tariff wall, to Russia. Cheapness of food 
keeps down production costs. As a German or 
Austrian province industrial Poland would have 
a lower tariff, and it would pay more for food. 
Until things adjusted themselves, it could not 
compete with the efficient German or Austrian 
industry. This is a manufacturer's view. The 
Social Democrats, though mainly industrial, 
reject it; they say that the profits from cheap 
food and high industrial prices go to the manu- 
facturers; and they covet the influence and 
legal protection which German Socialism en- 



WARSAW 123 

joys. The land interest is the opposite. As 
producer, the agricultural class suffers from low 
food prices; as consumer, from high industrial 
prices. The high German and Austrian food 
duties would favour the producer, and there 
would be cheap manufactured goods. These 
arguments go with motives of race and religion 
into the neutral, or divided, sum of Polish sym- 
pathy. After all their country had fallen into 
the invaders' hands the Poles adapted them- 
selves to new prospects and promises. They 
showed zeal to work with the conquerors, hop- 
ing probably to gain thereby the position of the 
Austrian Poles, who have not only liberty, but 
political power. 

The graceful half -Latin spirit — the levity of 
Slavs blent with old Catholic refinement — 
helped the Poles to withstand hopelessness, risk 
to their lives, and material loss. There were 
few complaints; some, with cause to complain, 
found distraction in small war discomforts; the 
distress caused by dirty streets made them for- 
get that their houses were burnt. The uncul- 
tured went to Pies Baskerville'ow, testing, as they 
watched the Hound, the spiritual links be- 
tween Britons and Slavs; they reasoned eat, 
drink furniture polish, and be merry; to-mor- 
row we die. Russian faith without Russian 



124 COLOURS OF WAR 

ardour gave them hope. The Germans would 
be beaten and would pay for the damage, or 
the Germans would win and build new houses; 
both would lose, and in their exhaustion Poland 
might gain. The cultured and well-to-do did 
not worry. On the way east before the armies 
they danced in battered chateaux; when they 
arrived with roubles in notes and pale-blue 
German promises to pay they gambled. North 
of the Vienna railway were gambling hells. A 
Kielce noble set the pace. His ten thousand 
sheep reposed in soldier stomachs; his house 
was razed; but he had gold and promises to 
pay. He gambled away the gold, the promises, 
his jewelry, the ashes of the house, and his 
trench-rent land. When he had lost all he re- 
solved to lose his life, and he made for the 
yellow river. Staff officers pulled him out, and 
hired him as interpreter, and he soon was seen 
in a Bsura dug-out gambling away his wage. 



CHAPTER VI 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 

A FIRST impression is that Poland in war 
consists of roads as broad as they are 
long. Some way from town, where 
houses are scattered and fences are few, the 
unpaven ways spread right and left; they have 
no edges; furrowed by wheels without end, 
they look like ploughed fields of black earth. 
In peace the roads ran before houses; now they 
run behind and before, making the gardens 
islands in mud-streams. As the old roads wore 
out; after Hindenburg dug holes in them to 
impede our march, the cavalry, artillery, am- 
bulances and transport moved along fringes of 
field; the fringes were churned up; traffic edged 
to new fringes, and the mud-stream spread. 
After autumn rain the shining surface froze; 
the army called it " Hindenburg's Rink," Katok 
Gindenburga, 

West and southwest there were many Hin- 
denburg rinks. The Germans and Austrians 
passed part of the country twice, part three 
times. In October they held all left- Vistula 

125 



126 COLOURS OF WAR 

country, except a triangle southwest, and an 
oblong of swamp west and northwest, of War- 
saw. On the 14th of October Hindenburg re- 
pulsed between Warsaw and Ivangorod the 
attack of eight corps. Backed by Germans, 
the Austrians stood before Ivangorod. Rus- 
sian cavalry crossed the Vistula near Novo- 
georgievsk. On the 18th of October cavalry 
fought cavalry at Sokatchew. On the 20th, 
Russian corps from over the river threatened 
the invader's left wing; and on the 21st Hin- 
denburg broke off the battle. The battle of the 
Vistula yielded neither side booty worth men- 
tioning; the issue was not pushed to extremes. 
It was the first meeting of the main German 
and Russian armies. To Russia it gave the en- 
couragement of the enemy's retreat; it showed 
that the Germans did not think themselves 
strong enough to win on the Vistula; and it 
caused the offensive, mistaken in England for a 
march on Berlin, to be begun with confidence. 
The Germans learned from it Russia's strength. 
They got new proof of the doctrine that while 
the opponent is unbeaten, the interior of his 
country cannot be surely held. The battle 
forced on them the strategy of destroying 
separately such parts of the army of Russia as 
were near the frontier. 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 127 

The theatre of the battle of the Vistula is 
true Poland. It is flat, with hills only at Kielce; 
there are ravines made by melted snow, mixed 
forests, and streams running through marsh, or 
between bluffs. On the land are many isolated 
factories of red brick; Girardoff, southwest of 
Warsaw, is a factory town. The villages have 
one street, the place of sojourn in summer and 
winter; the street is deep in miscellaneous 
transport dirt. The streets of the small towns 
radiate from market-places. The larger towns 
are dirty; they have stucco ambitions, and are 
more European, less homelike than the bare 
white, or bare log, houses of Russia. It is 
Europe, Slav Europe, not, as Russia is, Slav 
Asia. The Poles have weak faces and peering 
eyes; unlike the broad-faced moujiks, they are 
Europeans. They have the Slav dread of cold; 
in spring sunshine they wear sheepskin jackets 
and black lambskin caps. The little boys have 
top-boots and ragged breeches, and the little 
girls wear shawls. They are dirty, without being 
picturesque. The towns are Jewish, not Chris- 
tian; Jews sell in the market squares, lend 
money at usurious rates, and throw war false- 
hoods in. Some are red-haired or fair-haired; 
and all are oppressed and so meek that they 
invite oppression. The dress is a long gaber- 



128 COLOURS OF WAR 

dine and a flat, peaked cap. Over shops in 
Cyrillic and Latin letters are German-Jewish 
names. Many Jews are Gordons; this, with 
the children's ragged breeches, reminds you of 
home. 

The broadest Hindenburg rinks are around 
Lodz. Near Warsaw they are broad enough. 
They begin west of Prushkow, the high-tide 
invasion mark. I visited villages north and 
south; later Nadarshin, Groizy, and the small 
towns. History of the war is written in mud 
and battered roofs. As written in local brains 
it is mostly false. Citizens of Nadarshin said 
that the invaders were Austrians; there were 
no Germans; they knew the uniform and the 
Slav speech. I heard many doubtful things, and 
a few disconnected facts that stood examina- 
tion. 

West of Nadarshin were the first big trenches, 
Russian and enemy's, half full of snow water. 
The enemy's trenches were neatly cut and broad. 
Planks and balks lay about; the trenches had 
been covered. The westernmost trench had a 
square underground room. There were rags, 
papers, broken water-bottles; arms and shrap- 
nel-cases had disappeared. The October plan 
was to rush Warsaw. No serious fighting oc- 
curred before the river was reached; peasants 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 129 

say that the trenches were dug during the 
march east, for use in a foreseen retreat. At 
Skierniewice, when advancing, Hindenburg 
dug trenches, and flanked them with redoubts. 
These were not used during the advance; dur- 
ing the retreat a rearguard fought in them, 
covering the flank of columns which marched 
west through Lowitsch. 

To the south the country has fewer tracks 
of battle. The roads have spread less; there 
are small earthworks and some burnt villages. 
When the Germans retreated, the villagers, 
thinking the war was over, began to rebuild. 
Stoves, chimneys, floors, and brick foundations 
were intact. Rebuilding means nailing planks 
aslant round the chimneys, making a shed which 
from far looks like a tent. When Hindenburg 
took Lodz, and the roar from the Miazza was 
heard, the work ceased. In such a village, half 
restored, there were quarrels with the village 
exploiter — as Russians say, the "fist." The 
"fist" sold planks to the homeless at war 
prices; when the homeless fled from new ter- 
rors, he tore down their shed homes, and re- 
moved the planks. 

From Nadarshin I drove to Mlochow, and 
some hamlets to the south. These had suffered 
from robbers. One village the Germans shelled, 



130 COLOURS OF WAR 

setting the cabins on fire. The church escaped. 
This was a miracle; and when danger again 
threatened, refugees fled to the church as to a 
sanctjuary. The church could not be burnt. 
Behind the refugees came robbers, who agreed 
that the church could not be burnt, but dis- 
agreed about food. In a triangular duel — 
refugees, marauders, and natives — the church 
blazed. Marauders were strong between here 
and the Pilitsa. Uncertainty, hunger, and im- 
punity tempted men who in peace were honest. 
Having plundered manor-houses, the robbers, 
to efface clues, burnt them. Warsaw was full 
of booty. Military justice at first flogged 
robbers, then shot them. Suspects were made 
turn out their pockets. Robbers flourished 
under Austrian martial law in the southwest; 
the civil population was left to shift for itself. 
The German courts-martial worked hard. 

In these villages the war was little talked of, 
and near domestic terrors much. Peasants got 
used to the artillery roar and the midnight glow 
in the west; their interests were lawsuits de- 
layed by the war, weddings that did not come 
off, and hunts for gold which the Germans hid. 
Many had seen battles, but few knew what 
happened. The headman of Mlochow saw a 
fight which cost five thousand lives. He re- 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 131 

membered that the German helmet-spikes could 
not be seen; this surprised him, as he had often 
heard of the spikes, and seen pictures of them, 
and he believed that no German could fight 
without spikes. He remembered that the first 
shell aimed at the village would have upset a 
washing tub if it had fallen to the right. He 
did not remember whether the shell killed any 
one. Later shells killed people. The villagers 
were not depressed. On Sundays, villages 
which had little food and no workaday clothes 
sent out gaudy religious processions, trails of 
singing girls, and country fops who whistled 
music learned from the foe. There was no 
dignity or pathos. Warsaw had the city virtue, 
patriotism. Labourers sang, tediously but with 
feeling: "Not yet, not yet is Poland lost!" 

North of Grodsisk on the Vienna railway 
some houses had been destroyed as a reprisal. 
A commune official told me of the invasion. 
The Germans sought popularity, but they 
punished the least unfriendly act. In this 
part are the biggest German field fortifications. 
There is a crescent double trench, with sapped 
approaches running to the southeast, ending at 
the battered remains of an observation tower. 
The owners of the farms were filling the trenches 
m. Smaller German crescent trenches run 



132 COLOURS OF WAR 

parallel to the Warsaw fortifications. A rear- 
guard attacked these trenches; on being re- 
pulsed it retired into its own trenches, which 
are flanked by enclosed farms, and resisted until 
told to retreat. As the railway bridge of Grod- 
sisk was being blown up, German dragoons 
galloped to save it. They were on the bridge 
when the explosion came. This country is a 
vast camp. 

Along the river, above Warsaw, I got some 
notion of the strategy pursued. The first 
German advance was to the Vistula, and not 
only against Warsaw. The Vistula is Poland; 
it is the best strategical frontier. At the Alex- 
ander Bridge the river is a quarter of a mile 
broad; outside it is broader. The banks are low, 
and are often flooded. Sometimes for a short 
time there is ice which would bear artillery, 
sometimes none at all. In the past winter the 
river at Warsaw froze weakly twice. It is not 
likely that Hindenburg meant to cross with his 
whole army, and attack our army on the right 
bank. The right bank, if taken, could not have 
been held. The plan was probably to take 
Warsaw, and the tete de pont at Ivangorod, 
and to hold left- Vistula Poland. On the right 
bank might have been held the province of 
Plock, as far east as the railway to Mlava. 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 133 

The Bug-Narev fortresses would have hindered 
a further advance east. The German attempts 
in October to gain ground on the right bank 
were probably feints. Every big operation 
of Hindenburg has gone with activity in minor 
theatres. 

With a Russian friend, I visited Willanow, 
and from there went by motor-car to Gora Kal- 
warija, the first place on the river reached by 
the army which assailed Warsaw. Near the 
road were trenches, half filled in, but there 
were few signs of war. To Gora Kalwarija, 
by way of Rawa, came one of three columns 
in which the Germans marched. The other 
columns passed through Blone and Prushkow. 
The Gora Kalwarija column had pontoons. 
Having tried the river, it marched northwest. 
Outside, near the light railway, are small earth- 
works. The Germans passed in great force; 
they had a hundred field guns, the artillery of 
a corps. I saw buildings where a patrol with- 
stood Cossacks for hours. The besiegers, hav- 
ing no guns, peppered the walls with carbine 
bullets till no plaster was left. The windows 
of the village were glazed with greased paper. 
An old soldier brought me to a brick-kiln where 
concealed Russians ambushed the enemy's 
scouts. The Germans were let pass; when they 



134 COLOURS OF WAR 

found their retreat cut, they fought hard; they 
lost half their strength, and they galloped north 
into our lines. 

Among pleasantries of Warsaw, "the pride 
of Pjassetchno," a town on the light railway 
twenty miles south, competed with, "The Civil 
Government has fled." Pjassetchno believed 
itself to be the point nearest to Warsaw reached 
by the enemy; it brooded on the distinction 
till it lost the normal meekness of Judo-Polish 
townlets; it lost its head, it looked proudly at 
travellers, it talked as if Pjassetchno, not the 
yellow river and the Novogeorgievsk Cossacks, 
sent Hindenburg back. Civic patriots planned 
a monument; they wrote a modest inscription 
which proclaimed the townlet's fame, but gave 
the glory to the God of Christians and Jews. 
Emissaries, sent to Warsaw to buy a monument, 
came back with news that Prushkow, four miles 
nearer, also had German visitors, who had left 
their own monument in the shape of battered 
walls. A Pjassetchno bureaucrat whom I ques- 
tioned changed the subject. The Germans, 
he said, sent engineers to examine the light 
railway. They planned to extend it from 
Groizy, the terminus, to Koljushki, a junction 
for Czenstochowo. This would give them a 
new communication from east to west. The 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 135 

bureaucrat had his troubles. A staff officer, 
finding he read German, asked him to correct 
the Polish version of a notice. He was to be 
careful. The notice said that any one who dis- 
obeyed an order would be shot. Citizens were 
forbidden to approach a park of aeroplanes. 
The agitated official left out the "not" from 
"must not approach." Finding that he had 
disobeyed an order — the order to be careful 
— he begged for mercy on his knees. 

Pjassetchno's war-history was that "the Ger- 
mans put gun-cotton down the throats of their 
dead and blew them to bits. The aim was to 
conceal losses." The town, and some soldiers, 
agree that the enemy has his own way of de- 
stroying guns which must be abandoned. He 
elevates the muzzle, fills the gun with water, 
and fires. The resistance makes the gun burst. 
I heard this from a soldier who had fought in 
many fights, and had himself, he claimed, cap- 
tured two guns. He said that in the November 
retreat many guns were buried: "all Poland is 
one big gun." Of the destruction of guns near 
Pjassetchno he told this. The retreating Ger- 
mans abandoned a battery. A causeway of 
logs and railway sleepers across soft land had 
failed, and the guns fell in. At night, a rear- 
guard, having repulsed the Russians, sent in- 



136 COLOURS OF WAR 

fantry with machine guns, sappers, and en- 
gineers, to rescue the guns. The Russians were 
found dragging the guns from the morass. 

Two had been saved. A German searchlight 
glared; machine guns poured bullets from front 
and flanks; and many Russians fell. The 
survivors lay in a ditch, and tried with rifle fire 
to keep off the enemy. The saved guns were 
dragged away by volunteers. The other guns 
remained in the morass. "When we next ad- 
vanced, the guns were found, blown to bits 
with water." From this soldier I got many 
stories, mostly untrue. He said the Germans 
had tunnelled under the Vistula. Vermin 
quickened his fancy. When I bent over him 
to see his tunnel plan made with matches, he 
said: " High-Well-Born-Ness, keep off! The 
Landsturm will get you !" 

In Tartschin, which is twelve miles south- 
west, German shells struck some houses. Tart- 
schin is important; it lies at the junction of the 
main roads to Warsaw, Radom, and Skiernie- 
wice. On the morning of the 10th of October, 
the Germans, in small force, appeared. Russians 
were in strong positions near the town; they 
held the enemy for hours. The Germans, as 
always, were in a hurry ; without artillery prep- 
aration, they rushed at the trenches. Their 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 137 

aeroplanes dropped bombs, causing no loss. 
Later, they threatened the Russian flank, and 
the trenches were given up. Frightened towns- 
men rushed between the lines, and were killed. 
A grain-dealer took me to the ruins of his house, 
half a mile south. A shell destroyed it. Be- 
fore marching north, the Germans requisitioned 
sheepskin coats. Their proclamations said that 
half the Austro-German army was Catholic. 
They marched off with songs. There is a 
brothers' grave, with words in German, and 
words in Russian afterwards put up, and there 
is the grave of a child who went to see the 
battle, and never came back. 

All the Pilitsa valley is grave-strewn. There 
are soldiers' graves and graves of civilian vic- 
tims. In battle here, bayonets decided. To 
the west, with the Tsar's palace Spala, is Inow- 
lods, the junction of the German and Austrian 
lines. Houses west of Pribyschew are burnt 
and razed. A single flame seems to have con- 
sumed them. On the river the Russians held 
a slippery bank, the Blue Slope; Germans at- 
tacked and Russians defended till neither had 
a company left. Cossacks forded the stream; 
logs sent adrift swept them away. Near Warka 
the Siberians who crossed the Vistula at Ivan- 
gorod fought all day. In Warka there were a 



138 COLOURS OF WAR 

few wounded, at Nowe Miasto many, and a 
few graves. A sacristan's house sheltered six 
wounded Christian soldiers and four Moslem 
Turkmens, all cured by one surgeon's assistant 
and a Sister of Mercy. Three of the Turkmens 
spoke no Russian except " Exactly so, Your 
High-Well-Born-Ness ! " They lay four weeks 
in a town to the west, set out for Warsaw in 
a motor-car, and got stranded. Favourite was 
the Turkmen Hannibal. The chauffeur, having 
no other name, called him Hannibal; when 
asked if he was Hannibal the Turkmen, said: 
" Exactly so, Your High-Well-Born-Ness ! " The 
Russians pronounced it ominously Gannibal 
(they confound h and g). Hannibal was a 
barbarian, with inquisitive eyes, a yellow skin 
drum-tight but wrinkled, a burn, a bullet- 
wound, and one ear — a shell splinter took the 
other. The Turkmen fought after losing his 
ear, fought after the burn, but the bullet was 
too much. He was a holy man, and rebuked a 
comrade whose wound was made a pretext for 
neglecting prayer. His devotions caused laugh- 
ter. The oasis where he was born is east of 
Mecca, and he had learned to pray to the west, 
to the setting sun. Poland is west of Mecca, 
but the Turkmen could not box the compass. 
At sunset he dragged to the floor his striped 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 139 

blanket, looked earnestly towards Berlin, and 
prayed. The nurse laughed, and the surgeon 
said: "The Kaiser can't hear you !" Hannibal 
was obdurate. With his face straight towards 
the German lines, he gave thanks to the Power 
that had spared his life and one ear. 

At Nowe Miasto were other men from Asia. 
There were Turkmens, horsemen from the Cau- 
casus, and Siberian infantrymen who praised 
themselves and merited the praise. They have 
colonial ways, independence, and vigour. Where 
the moujik of Europe emphasises his helpless- 
ness with, "I cannot know!" the moujik of 
Asia knows everything; he argues on war and 
electricity, and he has a sea-lawyer's skill in 
growls. I heard Siberians condemning German 
tactics, and praising to the skies their own. 
They knew how the Turks, Americans, and 
Frenchmen do things, and commended the 
Turks. 'The Turks have no Christian souls. 
A Christian soul hems a man's freedom of ac- 
tion. . . ." To European soldiers the Siberians 
were "The Capless"; as they crossed the Vistula, 
they put their caps on their bayonets, and the 
wind carried the caps away. The Siberians 
liked the Grand Duke Nicholas; they believed 
that he boxed officers' ears, and that the officers 
deserved it. From villages past Lake Baikal 



140 COLOURS OF WAR 

came letters to the Commander offering help, 
and asking for it. A peasant wrote that he 
had twelve soldier sons. The Grand Duke 
sent him fifty roubles. A neighbour wrote 
that he had thirteen soldier sons. This proved 
to be untrue. The swindler got the answer: 
"Thirteen is an unlucky number, and you are 
an unlucky man as the Grand Duke is not send- 
ing you fifty roubles." 

At night I saw the Turkmens, ugly men in 
dressing-gowns striped like blazers, draggled 
busbies, and high boots. They flourished chased, 
curved swords; some stood on their saddles, 
peering at the moon, as if it sheltered Germans. 
The Turkmens were tribesmen of Hannibal. 
Skobeleff called them the world's best cavalry. 
They rode better than Cossacks. To Moscow, 
sent by the tribal elders, came chaperones — 
men — to see that the bloods withstood the 
Christian seduction, drink. The vodka shops 
were closed, the chaperones, incensed at finding 
no work — or no drink — returned. The Turk- 
mens grumbled in their own tongue at the 
inadequacy of war. It was dull. Kirghiz 
horsemen forswore water as much as wine, they 
galloped over a shell-swept plain sooner than 
cross a ford. 

The Moslems were good soldiers; many were 



HINDENBURG'S RINK 141 

promoted, and many for valour wore the St. 
George's Cross. They got the fourth class, 
without the ribbon, bringing an increase of 
pay, and a pension. Christians get a white 
enamel cross, with a picture of the Saint spearing 
the Dragon. In respect for their faith, the 
Turkmens, Tartars, Kirghizes get a cross with 
the Imperial Eagle instead of the Saint. To 
Opotschno came General Ivanoff, Commander 
of the Southern Armies, and pinned the expur- 
gated Cross on a Tartar's breast. The Tartar 
frowned at the Eagle, and said with emphasis: 
'I don't want the hen ! Give me the Cossack 
who's sticking his lance through the Kaiser!" 



CHAPTER VII 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 

IN February I visited Galicia. After the 
battle of Lodz, Galicia became the chief 
theatre of the Eastern campaign. The 
battle of Lodz is the chain of engagements 
which began at Wlozlawsk on the 14th of 
November and continued without break till 
the evacuation of Lodz on December the 6th. 
In these engagements both sides had unitary 
aims. The Lodz battle made Galicia chief 
theatre, because it showed that an invasion of 
Germany was beyond the army's power. The 
Germans proclaimed that the battle destroyed 
Russia's offensive capacity. As far as Germany 
was concerned, this was true; no general of- 
fensive has since been tried. But, without 
admitting defeat, Russia could not confine her- 
self to the defensive. She resolved to try a 
second time Austria-Hungary, the Power of 
less resistance. 

Galicia east of the Dunajec was in our hands. 
The taking of Cracow would have completed 
the conquest. This was not practicable while 

142 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 143 

the Austrians in South Poland held the Nida, 
outflanking, though the Vistula divided, an 
army on the march west. The Nida might 
have been forced, but that would have meant 
forcing also the Rawka and Bsura. Had this 
been done, the invasion of Prussia which failed 
in November must again have been tried. 
These were reasons why the new Russian of- 
fensive against Austria would not be on the 
front of Cracow. I heard in Petrograd that the 
offensive would be through the Carpathians. 
The initiative was with General Brusiloff, Com- 
mander of the Eighth Army. Our newspapers 
heard it, and with customary charity gave the 
enemy the plan. 

The conquest of Galicia, almost complete, 
was a political and moral gain. The strategical 
gain was potential, to be realised only by the 
conquest of Hungary. When Russia took Ga- 
licia, she did not clear her flanks; she did not 
tear apart the strategical sack which smothered 
Poland, the primary sphere of operations. The 
conquest widened the sack. Hungary remained 
a place of arms, supplies, communications. 
With Hungary untouched, and the Carpathian 
passes in Austrian hands, or not impregna- 
bly in our hands, Austria could attack the 
flank of Russian armies moving west in an 



144 COLOURS OF WAR 

offensive against Germany. The political and 
moral gains were great. Russia, alone of the 
Allies, had won battles in Europe, taken many 
prisoners, and occupied enemy territory. Gali- 
cia, where not Jewish, was Slav. Enthusiasts, 
with All-Russian faith, proclaimed the attain- 
ment of historic aims, reunion with Red Russia, 
the reconstitution of Poland. Cooler heads 
valued Galicia as an asset in peace liquidation. 
In case of victory in the main theatre, Galicia, 
with other things, would be kept; and it could 
be exchanged in case of defeat for land lost 
elsewhere. 

The conquest of Galicia was creditable, and 
easy. Both sides fought well. The conditions 
of defence, a good railway system excepted, 
were bad. Galicia is a salient in enemy territory, 
as on a larger scale is Poland, and, on a smaller 
scale, East Prussia. All the salients were in- 
vaded. Galicia joins the Russian plain. The 
frontier has no hills, and only in parts rivers. 
In numbers Russia was much stronger than 
Austria. This was not foreseen. The Austro- 
German Alliance assumed that Italy would 
help, or at least be friendly, that the Balkan 
States would not oppose, and that Great Brit- 
ain, if she joined the enemy, would do little. 
Had this been so, the Austrians and Germans 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 145 

would have won with ease. But Austria fought 
Servia, watched Italy, and helped Germany 
against France and England. The numbers 
in the first crisis of Galicia are not known. The 
Russians were stronger, perhaps by two, per- 
haps by three to one. 

Hoping for victories before Russia concen- 
trated her armies, Austria attacked. A success 
would have hindered the concentration. The 
Austrian advance was in a northeasterly di- 
rection against the front Warsaw-Liublin-Lem- 
berg. At the end of August, the Austrians 
under Dankl defeated the Russians at Krasnik, 
and drove them back on Liublin. A few days 
later, the Austrian centre was beaten before 
Lemberg. Lemberg was abandoned. The Aus- 
trians, holding Przemysl, retreated over the 
San, then over the Wisloka. Hindenburg in- 
tervened. The troops set free by the victories 
of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes were 
sent south; they marched against the Upper 
Vistula to threaten the flank of the pursuing 
Russians. In order to meet Hindenburg, the 
Russians in Galicia relaxed their pursuit. They 
transferred troops to South Poland, east of the 
Vistula. Then developed the situation which 
led the Germans and Austrians to the front 
Warsaw-Ivangorod, and the Austrians back to 



146 COLOURS OF WAR 

the San and Przemysl. The position of the 
German and Austrian armies was bad. The 
Russian concentration in superior force was 
complete; a decisive battle could not be fought 
so far from home. After heavy fighting, which 
did not take the character of a decisive battle, 
both invaders went back. They were followed 
by the Russians, who regained nearly all of 
Galicia. On December the 4th the Russian 
advance-guard was eight miles from Cracow. 
After the German victory at Lodz, came a 
new Austrian offensive. On December the 
12th, the Austrians won the battle of Limanovo; 
they retook Neu-Sandec, and Bochnia. A week 
later, the Russians ceased to retreat, and took 
a front facing Cracow. The enemies built field 
fortifications, and their lines remained with little 
change for four months. Galicia, six thousand 
square miles excepted, remained Russian. 

In the struggle for the Carpathian passes, 
there were corresponding waves of success and 
failure. Russia first reached the watersheds 
in September after the Austrian retreat. When 
Hindenburg marched against Warsaw and the 
Upper Vistula, the passes were lost. During 
the general retreat the Russians took them 
again. After Limanovo, the Austrians ad- 
vanced, the threatened Eighth Army was with- 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 147 

drawn, passes were lost. The Austrians reached 
the southern railway. They fortified the passes 
and slopes. Fortifications made the Carpathian 
strategical frontier impregnable to Russian as- 
saults in March and April, and influenced the 
campaign. 

In February, little happened in Galicia. 
The armies defending and facing Cracow held 
their lines, and cold and snow checked the 
offensive in the hills. At the beginning of the 
month, to aid the Carpathian armies, came 
a German force under General v. Linsingen, 
commander of the Second Prussian Corps. 
In Warsaw, officers spoke confidently of the 
march into Hungary. There were dangers, I 
saw, other than weather; the plan could be 
justified only on the ground that other offensive 
plans were hopeless. An advance into Hun- 
gary would encourage the enemy to force the 
Cracow front, and to threaten the invaders' 
rear. This convinced me that the Cracow front 
was more interesting than the Carpathian. If 
the march on Hungary were postponed, there 
was no use going to the Carpathians; if it were 
tried with success, a flank attack on the Cracow 
front would bring the decision. 

The front facing Cracow was held by the 
Third Army. Radko Dimitriyeff, a hero of 



148 COLOURS OF WAR 

the last Balkan War, commanded. The army 
held lines from the Vistula, along the Dunajec, 
to a point south of Wojnicz, from there across 
the Biala to Gorlice and the summits, near 
Konieczna in the East Beskides. This pro- 
longed the front of Central Poland, which be- 
gan at the confluence of the Vistula and Bsura, 
continued along the Rawka and Nida, and 
ended at the Nida confluence. In places, 
Radko Dimitriyeff held the left bank of the 
Dunajec; on the Tarnow section he held the 
right bank. The strength of the army I did 
not know. The staff was at Pilzno, the staff 
of the Ninth Corps at Tarnow. The Austrians 
had three or four corps, and, on the right, a 
German division. The Archduke Joseph com- 
manded. 

I visited the Cracow front with a Russian. 
We travelled by motor-car from Warsaw, by 
way of Grojec, Radom, and Opatow, to San- 
domierz, the frontier town. There is a good 
road twenty -five to thirty -five miles behind the 
front, repaired after the German and Austrian 
retreat. Except for the artillery roar, heard 
at Grojec, and two red conflagration glares, 
there was no sign of present war. In October 
the enemy had held the country; some parts 
had been twice, some three times, lost and won. 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 149 

The damage along the road and to the east was 
small. In Radom, Grojec, and the townlets 
nearer Warsaw, were houses in ruin, as a rule 
together in blocks, the damage having been 
done by single shells. Fighting near the Pilitsa 
was severe. Close together, there were field 
fortifications, sometimes with breastworks, re- 
doubts, big dugouts, wolf-pits, and the ragged, 
snow-filled ravines of exploded mines, always 
with wire obstacles. Many trenches saw no 
fighting, many were unfinished or badly dug. 
The Russians are supposed to be best when 
underground: that is true during a protracted 
defence; when attacking, they look on shelter- 
trenches and cover-taking as shameful; many 
shallow trenches bear witness to this. West of 
Bjalobrshegi on the Pilitsa are German trenches 
of great size; they have underground chambers 
with planked floors, walls, and ceilings. Ex- 
cept shell fragments, there were no relics of 
war on the ground; the peasants had rifles, 
shrapnel-cases used as vases, water-bottles, 
bullets, and books and papers taken from the 
dead. 

Among the settled population, war was not 
much affecting economic life. There was enough 
necessary food; foreign and colonial products 
sold at prices not much higher than at Petro- 



150 COLOURS OF WAR 

grad; and, except in areas of destruction, busi- 
ness went on as in peace. A Pole whom I knew 
well, the late Jean de Bloch, foretold that 
economic exhaustion would terminate a great 
war. Three months were his respite. A great 
war, he said, would be mainly indecisive posi- 
tion war. He was an economist who under- 
stood economy, and did not understand war; 
his predictions about economy have proved 
wrong, and his predictions about war have 
proved right. In Radom, the Government 
capital, I found Jewish traders starting for 
Paris to buy goods. When I was in Stockholm, 
I saw these traders buying German goods. 
War did not divert the paths of economy, much 
less suppress it. 

I crossed the Vistula at Sandomierz. Sando- 
mierz lies ten miles from the San confluence, 
in a toppling, impressive way on a hill, over- 
looking dirty water, then strewn with dirty 
floes. It is the town of the Consensus Sando- 
miriensis. Sandomierz is best seen from the 
Galician plain on the right bank. There is a 
cathedral church, also a castle built by Casimir, 
and you enter under a red brick arch. In the 
red brick town hall are marks of a projectile. 
I did not search for damage, and saw little, 
but I found at the cathedral, on the brink of 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 151 

the hill, the new grave of a doctor of medicine. 
On the Austrians approaching, the doctor and 
a fugitive hid in a cellar. When the fugitive 
was forced to come out, the doctor came with 
him, and the wrong man was killed. Across 
the river is Nadbrezie. Part of the temporary 
bridge was under water; when I came back, 
all was under. Engineers and sappers were 
working on a new log bridge with a curved 
approach through the marsh. The work was 
well done. A railway runs from Nadbrezie 
to Debica, and Nadbrezie is mostly made up 
of terminus sheds. 

From Nadbrezie I made, by way of Mielec 
and Debica, for Pilzno, beyond the North 
Galicia Railway. There were few signs of war. 
In Mielec and Debica are shattered houses; 
there are some wrecked cabins, and factories 
in ruins. Factories, standing alone, often suffer; 
they are targets; sometimes they serve as staff 
headquarters, sometimes as lookout points, 
sometimes they are the enemy's workshops. 
At Tarnobrzeg on a hill of oaks is the chateau 
of Count Tarnowski, now a hospital. He is 
one of the many Tarnowskis in Austrian and 
Russian Poland. The chateau was plundered. 
Russians say that the Austrians did the plun- 
dering, the Count being suspected of Russian 



152 COLOURS OF WAR 

leanings. There are three parallel trenches, 
with entanglements intact, and beside and be- 
hind the trenches are cottages, also intact. 
The trenches do not seem to have been used. 
Near Debica, I met prisoners, well-dressed, 
happy men, guarded by two Cossacks. They 
answered in Ruthenian my inquiry made in 
German; one gave in bad German as cause of 
his surrender, "Winter fighting is incredibly 
hard!" They had come from the flank, high 
in the hills. A frost-bitten man said that the 
night temperature was — 17° R.; that on flat 
surfaces the snow lay three feet deep, twenty 
feet deep in ravines. The prisoners' bread ra- 
tion was smaller than our men's. Their treat- 
ment was good. I met two more parties. The 
second was under charge of infantry soldiers. 
The soldiers transferred the prisoners to other 
guards, and half an hour later overtook our 
broken-down car. They belonged to Radko 
Dimitriyeff's army, and praised the general 
"as good for a Bulgarian." "Why, for a Bul- 
garian?" The soldiers came from Kherson, 
where there is a Bulgarian colony; they got on 
badly with the Bulgarians because the Bulga- 
rians grow vegetables for sale, and the mou- 
jiks do not. The Bulgarians were Russian 
subjects. "Fifteen of them are Ivanoffs, all 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 153 

in the same battalion." The Bulgarians dis- 
pleased the Russians by their thrift. "Our 
Russians write post-cards all day if they've 
money, and if they haven't, they get it from 
students." When a student gave the Russians 
a rouble, they rushed to the telegraph, and 
sent this message to their village: "All alive, 
Kuznetzoff, Drozdoff, BiriukoflF, Reshetnikoff, 
Karpoff, Rodni, Polunin." This magniloquence 
at five copecks a word scandalised the Bul- 
garians. They sent a telegram, signed in the 
plural "Ivanoffs": "All alive except Matthew." 
The soldiers told me many things about pris- 
oners. I saw them last at Pilzno, near the 
commander's house. 

Pilzno, become a centre of orthodoxy, was 
getting ready for the Great Fast. A room of 
the Field Treasury, hung with pine-needle 
wreaths and garlands, was the chapel. Steam- 
ing soldiers crossed themselves, and droned 
Gospodi pomilui! Pilzno is chiefly market 
square. Radko Dimitriyeff and his immediate 
staff lived in a house on the square. A motor- 
car generator rattled at the corner. Shop- 
keepers on the edge of the town told me the 
noise came from machine guns. There were 
few officers and soldiers, no formalities on 
entering the town, and, except at the com- 



154 COLOURS OF WAR 

mander's house, no sentries. The square was 
clean, the machine-gun generator supplied elec- 
tric light. 

An army commander keeps no state. He is 
a great, but a very little man. He may com- 
mand five corps, and may have under him five 
generals, each commanding forces larger than 
the British army of Waterloo, but he is the 
underling of a subordinate. Over him is the 
commander of a group of armies, who may 
command six armies as big as his, numbering 
a million, and over the commanders of groups 
is the Commander-in-Chief. The army of 
General Radko Dimitriyeff, with the Carpa- 
thian armies and the forces in South Poland, 
was under Ivanoff, whose headquarters were 
Cholm, a hundred miles away. The Grand 
Duke's headquarters were at Baranovitchi, 
three hundred miles from the nearest front, 
and four hundred from the farthest. I heard 
this military hierarchy criticised. It is hard 
to combine freedom for the army commander 
with unity of strategy. The Germans, having 
smaller forces, omitted one instance of com- 
mand — there was no intermediary between 
Hindenburg and his army commanders. The 
Russian command before the Tsar took it over 
had another feature. The Commander-in-Chief 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 155 

was advised by two officers: the Director of 
Military Operations and the Chief of Staff. 
The first was General Daniloff, the second, 
General Yanushkievitch. The Director sub- 
mitted plans of operations, and the Chief of 
Staff discussed them with the Commander-in- 
Chief. No one could tell what was the special 
aim of this system, or who decided differences 
between the Director and the Chief of Staff. 

Radko Dimitriyeff welcomed my Russian 
companion and me. The general is less im- 
posing than his portraits; he is less like Na- 
poleon, and is like no one else. He is a little, 
broad-shouldered, spare man, with thin hair, 
coal-black, with black moustaches, a high nose, 
and dark eyes, beetling and sharp. Russian 
he talks through his nose without Bulgarian 
accent. He introduces his wishes and fore- 
casts with appeals to God. If he has forgotten 
the "s bozheyu pomoschtchiu" — "with the help 
of God" — he breaks off, says it with double 
emphasis as if in apology, and begins again. 
He is plainly sharp -thinking and pious, zealous 
that no man shall take him for a worldling. 
He lives plainly, and to all visitors says, "We 
make war with fasting and prayer." He wore 
a rubbed uniform with the white enamel crosses 
of the Third and Fourth Classes of the Order 



156 COLOURS OF WAR 

of St. George. At dinner were six officers of 
the Staff, hospitable, frank, and kindly men of 
Russian mould. One was Colonel Kozloff, the 
explorer of Mongolia, who knows many English- 
men, and has been honoured by our geog- 
raphers. For some weeks he was Town Com- 
mandant of Tarnow. 

Radko Dimitriyeff promised that I should 
find his army and the other armies of Galicia 
in good health and temper. Success had in- 
spirited them. The Third Army's sickness 
rate was lower than in peace time. He put 
that down to the climate, the bright February 
sun, the dryness of hill positions. In the past 
six weeks the Galician armies had taken 45,000 
prisoners. Of the defeat of General v. Sievers' 
Tenth Army in East Prussia nothing was said; 
but it was known that the Russians were out 
of Germany. The general praised the equip- 
ment of the Austrians, the skill of their offi- 
cers, and their good Staff work. He criticised 
them for bad morale, shown by easy surrenders 
and unsoldierly willingness of prisoners to talk. 
The cause was not cowardice, but weakness 
of interest in the war, absence of the race re- 
sponsibility and the race solidarity which make 
Germans formidable. I heard this from other 
Russians, and believed it; but observation 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 157 

showed me that morale must not be judged from 
prisoners. The catastrophe which overtook this 
army in May, partly at the hands of Austrians, 
confirmed my view. The Austrians are able 
and active; their defeat and retreat in Galicia 
can be explained by their weakness in numbers. 
The May battle and the active defence of the 
Carpathians in March and April showed the 
unwisdom of the assumption that the Aus- 
trians are worn out; since then the Austrians 
have had unbroken success. 

The enemy, Radko Dimitriyeff told me, was 
well furnished with artillery, in particular with 
heavy howitzers and mortars, and he had 
enough shells. His position was naturally as 
strong as ours. West of Tarnow, our lines com- 
manded; in other parts, the Austrians held 
higher ground. The low-lying Austrian lines 
on the left Dunajec were naturally weak; they 
were subject to flooding, and might be fired 
into from above, but they were defended against 
infantry attack by wolf-pits, fougasse mines, 
and entanglements. Later, I heard that there 
were tread mines. A tread mine is a flat bomb 
with horizontal, radial metal rods. The bombs 
are laid close together with the rods touching, 
and are covered with earth and sods. Pressure 
on the rods makes the bombs burst. This is 



158 COLOURS OF WAR 

economical and effective; only such bombs 
explode as will kill attackers, and when the 
enemy is repulsed the bombs are easily re- 
newed. Mining for defence is slow work; it 
consumes much explosive, and causes little 
loss. The general believed that his army was 
stronger than the Austrian army; in the then 
present relation of strength he could resist any 
attack; he could force the opposing lines, and 
march on Cracow. He awaited strategical 
developments. The Third Army, as the left 
flank, could not be extended when the centre 
west of Warsaw was stationary and the right 
had been driven back to the Niemen. The 
army was well equipped, well fed, and supplied 
with enough shells. I did not hear much of 
big guns. The general was certain that he, 
and Russia, would win, and, qualifying with 
"with God's help !" he told me the peace which 
Russia must make. 

I asked about the conduct of the army, of 
the enemy, and of the people. In the country 
held by Radko Dimitriyeff's troops little damage 
had been done wilfully; damage from battle 
and accident was not great, odd houses in towns, 
factories, single peasant cabins, and a few whole 
villages had suffered. What I saw on the road 
from Sandomierz was a fair measure of the ruin 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 159 

elsewhere. The troops behaved well; the men 
had been told to treat the people as friends; 
there had been very little plundering, but no 
army is perfect. For goods requisitioned the 
army paid with notes. Swindlers, or the en- 
emy, forged Russian credit notes; soldiers re- 
fused to take them, and the legend spread that 
the Russians were repudiating their own notes. 
No one touched the goods of the peasants, 
workmen, policemen, and minor officials who 
stayed at home. The higher officials, country 
gentlemen, and residents who had connections 
with Vienna left their homes unguarded, and 
peasants took the opportunity to settle old 
scores. The peasants wanted the war to end. 
In politics, the country belongs to Cracow, a 
centre of Austrophile feeling. The Third Army 
showed sense in ignoring this, and treating the 
people as friends. Few attempts were made 
against communications, and civilian spies were 
rare. Soldier spies, dressed as peasants, crossed 
the Dunajec; one was shot the day of my arrival. 
He died bravely. Sokols — and other francs- 
tireurs — inspired from Cracow, made trouble. 
Marianna Prebyla, an educated girl, when not 
writing verse, in which she had skill, shot 
Russians. She wore a Hussar uniform. Her 
friends of the Sokol band wore civilian dress, 



160 COLOURS OF WAR 

and when caught they were shot. Marianna, 
too, was captured. Perhaps because she was 
uniformed, perhaps because she did not cite 
her verse in defence, no one wanted to shoot 
her. Orders were sent for. The hierarchical 
system, needed for the command of millions, 
delays replies, and, tired of awaiting execution, 
Marianna rode off on a captured horse. She 
left verses behind. She fired provocatively at 
the sentry, who had not seen her, risking her 
life for the joy of killing a foe. Later, she 
sniped with vigour on the Tarnow road. 

Radko Dimitriyeff is looked on as a soldiers' 
general. Pilzno is twenty miles from the Du- 
najec; but the commander spent much time 
within rifle-range of the enemy; he knew the 
earthworks, and the position of every company. 
Commands based more on memory than on 
maps went by the field -telephone wires which 
sagged from yellow sticks along the road. To 
knowledge of the country was due a small but 
useful success. The Austrians attacked, and 
counter-attacked. The commander, in his room, 
remembered a winding of the hills which gave 
cover. He sent infantry behind it, and these 
surprised the Austrians' flank. To his Staff 
and men the general was a hero and a shield. 
They believed that shells ceased to burst when 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 161 

he was near. In Petrograd bad men envied 
him; and good men, meaning a compliment, 
classed him with Brusiloff, his neighbour. 

In the evening, without the general, the Staff 
talked of Austrians, Germans, and music. The 
officers had seen little fighting; one who had 
not always been on the Staff had seen a great 
deal. A young officer played Puppchen, dis- 
cord which enraged me in Berlin, but pleased, 
as proof of military liberality, here. The officers 
knew little of the war in Poland; they got be- 
lated newspapers; of the war in the West they 
knew nothing; they praised the way our Gov- 
ernment conducted it. They spoke of the Ger- 
mans in soldier way; praised their equipment, 
courage, and leadership; and had great words 
for Hindenburg. This I ascribed to chivalry. 
I knew from our experts that the Field-Marshal 
was a fussy, instable man, not without ideas, 
who spent his days getting his men into holes, 
and claiming victories when he got them out. 
The Germans, the officers said, had a more 
businesslike way of fighting than the Austrians; 
they had no desire to be showy; and while 
they lost many men, few were wasted. The 
Hungarians were spectacular. The officer who 
had seen fighting from near told me a story of 
spectacular death. 



162 COLOURS OF WAR 

This happened before the battle of Lemberg. 
Hungarians, entrapped on a farm, were at- 
tacked by infantry and Cossacks. They re- 
sisted. The only path of retreat was along a 
fenced lane, blocked by carts. Some Hun- 
garians fired; the others cleared the lane. 
Cossacks were sent to cut the road. The Hun- 
garians came into the open, attacked, lost 
heavily, and fled back to cover. Russian bat- 
talions, having heard the firing, came to help. 
They brought guns. Shells were poured into 
the farm; a white flag went up. The Hun- 
garians offered to surrender on terms. They 
asked to be allowed, without arms, to rejoin 
the army. The Russian field statutes do not 
allow of this; and the hopelessness of resistance 
made the request absurd. The Russians told 
the besieged to surrender. They got a refusal. 
The parlementaires went back, and shelling 
was resumed. The farmhouse caught fire. 
Through field-glasses the Russians watched 
the destruction. Hungarians, their faces red 
from the glare, crowded into a room. A sol- 
dier who rushed out was struck by a falling 
beam. When the flames got near the room, 
smoke cut off the sight. The Hungarians shot 
themselves, or burned to death. This story 
ended in more Puppchen — the Magyars' dirge. 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 163 

I spent a night at Pilzno. Guns boomed. My 
servant was a reservist from Pennsylvania with 
a bare chin, sharp eyes, and a Roman nose 
which spoke pure American. He resembled 
a senator. At dawn, starting for Tarnow, I 
asked the Poles if they had heard the guns. 
They pointed towards the square where the 
motor-generator rattled, and said, "The ma- 
chine guns stopped at twelve." 

Tarnow is the best town between Lemberg 
and Cracow, and it has values for war. The 
North Galicia railway crosses a line from the 
Vistula via Neu-Sandec to the hills and Epe- 
ries. The Austrians left on the 9th of Novem- 
ber. Next day came Circassian horsemen, who 
prayed in the street at sunset. I visited Gen- 
eral Schtcherbatchoff, commander of the Ninth 
Corps, a scientific soldier, formerly a Staff 
Academy instructor. Tarnow is a contrast with 
neglected Russian Poland. It starts in mud 
as a one-story village which recalls Ireland, 
and develops into a little metropolis. There is 
a red brick cathedral; the Schwarzenberg Hus- 
sars club-house would grace Pall Mall; and 
there are big administrative buildings. The 
club and the Government houses were used as 
hospitals of the Duma, the Red Cross, and the 
Union of Russian Towns. In baths arranged 



164 COLOURS OF WAR 

by the Union of Towns, I found sixty soldiers, 
steamed, dripping trench dirt. Tarnow had 
daily bombardments. Until May, when Gor- 
lice was razed by four hours' shelling, no town 
on the Cracow front heard more shells burst. 
This morning, there were deafening roars; and 
afterwards some sharp reports. These came 
from Russian guns. The Austrians, who rested 
seldom, were resting. Their big guns were on 
the hills west of the Dunajec. They had many 
30.5 mortars, field howitzers, and a 42 cm. gun 
which was twelve kilometres from the town. 
Radko Dimitriyeff showed me the photograph 
of an unexploded 42 cm. shell, inscribed in 
whitewash with its history and size. He be- 
lieved that it came from a Krupp mortar, a 
Thick Bertha, which was served by Germans 
but belonged to Austria. Later, I learned that 
the gun was a Skoda howitzer, "the Pilsener." 
It was built independently of Krupp, resembled 
the Krupp mortar only in size ; in other respects 
it was like the Austrian 30.5 mortars. The in- 
itial speed is greater than the speed of the Thick 
Bertha; the shell weighs six hundred pounds 
more: at normal working pressure a shot can 
be fired every four minutes. This gun appeared 
on New Year's Day: the first shell burst in a 
courtyard behind the Rathaus, and dug a hole 



THE FRONT OF CRACOW 165 

sixteen feet deep and thirty broad. The last 
shell before my arrival fell in a suburb; the 
gas storm blew in the wall of a house far away. 
After that, the Pilsener aimed at the railway- 
station. The track and outbuildings were de- 
stroyed; the turntable lay bottom up; but the 
station-house was spared. The station-house is 
Tarnow's pride; it is new, and has a dedicatory 
plate with effigy of Francis Joseph, frescoed 
walls, and stained-glass windows. The con- 
cussions broke the windows, and sent plaster 
flying; glass and plaster littered the floor; but 
no shell struck the roof or walls. A sentry who 
had seen shells burst every day for six weeks 
had not a scratch. The town, which the Relief 
Committee of Vevey describes as "ruins and 
ashes," had twenty or thirty houses destroyed 
out of several thousands. There were gaps, 
with flat heaps of brick. The cathedral and 
the hospital escaped. Afterwards, I heard, the 
Ursuline Convent suffered. 

From safety standpoint, Tarnow was worse 
than Warsaw, where air bombs made mere pin- 
holes. The tedium of interexplosion hours was 
varied by the same graceful levity. Citizens 
ran away when Ruzski took Lemberg, well out 
of shell range, and when battle drew near 
enough to be dangerous they came back. The 



166 COLOURS OF WAR 

houses next the railway-station were occupied, 
and from windows overlooking shell craters 
children peeped. The shops were busy, there 
were cheap biographs with the same Hound of 
the Baskervilles ; and M. Smirnoff, "with the 
Commandant's permission," and the permis- 
sion, later withdrawn, of the art-loving Pil- 
sener, gave pianoforte recitals. A Warsaw actor 
whom the Russians brought to replace the 
refugee owner of the Cafe Avenue, said that 
residents of the safe country to the east came 
to Tarnow for recreation. The Russians helped 
them. There were no passports, restrictions, or 
menaces. The soldier is a better master than 
the bureaucrat; people spoke well of Radko 
Dimitriyeff as a just and kindly man, and 
Tarnow in war was pleasanter than Russia in 
peace. 

In Galicia the Russians behaved as if they 
had come to stay. Official utterances and the 
Press of Petrograd implied that the province 
had been rejoined to Russia after a few years 
of Austrian rule. On the eve of the unlucky 
battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, the Tsar paid a visit, 
and proclaimed that Galicia was annexed, and 
a week after the battle the Commander-in- 
Chief was decorated as Galicia's Liberator. 
Russian money was the legal exchange; Aus- 



THE I T Of CBAC 1*7 

trian circulated at a fixed course. The yell . 
Austrian letter-boxes with the double eagle, 
hardly distinguishable from Russian, were in 
place bo - L , of use. The ans . 

taken th K. Minor officials, policemen, and 

students i :ian kepi. The t 

population was left alon The Jews, as in 
Poland, suffered much. I was told they suf- 
fered bei I believe they 
were spies because they suffered. In Eastern 

!icia, cond. ! different. Lembag 

had three Russian daily papers; the chief, 
Carpathian Russia. The soldiers treated the 
people half as Russians and as friends; the 
bureaucrats, in their zeal to make them R 
sian, treated them as enemies. Russification 
went on at high -d; citizens who wanted 

to remain Ruthenian were exiled, school- 
teachers were sent to Russia to learn Russian, 
and the assimilators proclaimed that chil- 
dren must learn Russian. Examinations in the 
Russian language were held. The Academy 
at Petrograd admits that Ruthenian is a lan- 
guage, not a dialect. Violent Nationalists who 
from th - ademy were followed to 

licia by an intolerant bishop, who dn red 
that the people had no right to their religion, 
as their forefathers had been fooled into it by 



168 COLOURS OF WAR 

evil men. These measures for thoroughness — 
also, as the enemy had fifteen hundred guns on 
the Dunajec, for timeliness — recalled the au- 
tumn programmes of Petrograd amateurs. The 
Duma strongly protested against these measures. 
Humane men condemned them; cynical men 
thought that they might be postponed, and 
executed with the other plans, formulated 
when war broke out, for the happiness of man- 
kind. 



CHAPTER VIII 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 

WEST of Tarnow, I crossed the Biala 
by a long bridge which Russians built 
in a week. The airy Polish — or airy 
human — spirit persisted. All the way to the 
Dunajec from Rzuchkowo village, then a di- 
visional staff headquarters, cabins and farms 
are hidden in little valleys. Some houses were 
between the reserve positions and the terraced 
trenches by the river. Some were a thousand 
yards from the Austrian entanglements. The 
hill-crests sheltered them from direct fire; but 
bullets fired at high elevations fell. Houses 
near the field-artillery positions were in danger 
from shell and shrapnel. Over the whole coun- 
try, day and night, went "Pilsener" shells, 
twelve-inch shells, field-howitzer shells; and 
shrapnel, turned on our gunners, poured the 
ugliest kind of bullet down. This had been so 
since Christmas. At first the people fled, but 
they returned, and stayed. Men, made home- 
less by earlier fires, were laying roofs, women 
and children worked on the slopes, and cattle 

169 



170 COLOURS OF WAR 

grazed. Visitors new to projectiles are nervous; 
when told to bend, because heads are seen over 
the ridge, they bend without shame. There 
were no ducking peasants, but some who 
sawed logs were bent into safety. 

On the Lower Dunajec, where Radko Dimi- 
triyeff 's army held both banks, a thousand shells 
fell in a day. Eighteen men were killed. For 
wealth of shelling and meanness in results, it 
was often so. Divisional staff officers spoke 
of the small loss from long-range shelling. 
Ceaseless shelling, they said, has military use 
if the shellers are well supplied, if eroded guns 
are quickly replaced. It hampers movement, 
threatens safety on the etappe roads, and strains 
nerves. The Austrians knew this, and the Ger- 
mans knew it. War, even when the visible 
gain is small, must be waged at high tension. 
Rifle-bullets aimed at heaven flew all day. 
There were alarms. When it grew dark, the 
enemy's "aiming bullets" burst with vicious 
blue flames. There were more alarms at night; 
before dawn the front blazed provocatively 
with star-shells, and, peering over the river 
breastworks, our men saw faces in the enemy's 
trench. 

The battle of Gorlice-Tarnow spoiled the 
doctrine that shells do no harm. During my 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 171 

visit it was so. Sometimes the Russians ignored 
the shells. They kept their strength for in- 
fantry fights, short and sharp. These rights 
ended well. We took prisoners, extended our 
trenches, and twice drove the enemy from posi- 
tions naturally strong, and made him intrench 
on weak ground. In such a battle the Austrians 
lost the right Dunajec bank. Two brigades 
fought. The Austrian lines were charged, and 
a colonel and eight hundred men were made 
prisoners. It was on this day that the com- 
mander's memory of front topography led to 
the enemy being trapped. The unfinished 
Austrian shelter-trenches, a row of oval holes, 
twelve inches deep, remained. Farther up the 
river were tentative night attacks. A Tyro- 
lean captain, shivering and rheumatic, de- 
scribed the last attack. The Dunajec, no- 
where a great obstacle, has fords. At night, 
taking advantage of a shift of our infantry, 
Austrians started to cross. The sun shone on 
the foot-hills since the middle of January; snow 
was melting, and the water was high. Thirty 
soldiers were swept down, the Tyrolean reached 
the Russian bank, and was taken prisoner. 
Some men, he told me, perished in holes made 
by our sappers. The Austrians tried to cross 
by a ford higher up, but the delay gave time 



172 COLOURS OF WAR 

to strengthen our trenches, and the attack 
failed. 

Shelling, desultory rifle fire, and far-off, small 
outpost collisions, were all that happened on 
the day I reached the front. Aeroplanes were 
shelled. Early in the morning an Austrian air- 
man soared over Tarnow Cathedral. The 
people looked up. As we crossed the slopes 
west of Rzuchkowo on the way to the field- 
artillery positions, a biplane flew from beyond 
the Dunajec, made a loop, and sped east. We 
were approaching a depression with a new 
earthen rampart where I expected to find a 
battery. Protected in this way was a field-gun, 
mounted on a wooden stage resembling a rail- 
way turntable. It did duty as anti-airship 
gun. A battery commander who came down 
the hill gave orders to shell the biplane with 
shrapnel. I think it was more from desire to 
show something than in hope of hitting the 
biplane. The shell burst; the aeroplane turned, 
cut through the smoke puff, and dwindled to 
a line. 

The battery officers spoke of Austrian air- 
men, who were strong in numbers, bold, and 
efficient in ruses. A few days back, airmen had 
dropped bombs on Brzostek, a town on the 
Wilsoka, probably believing that the com- 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 173 

mander was there. A Zeppelin crossed the 
Dukla Pass. The wind on the Dunajec scat- 
tered air-leaflets headed, "How Prisoners Live 
in Austria; Eetter Than Free Men at Home." 
At Rozwadow, an airman caused the abandon- 
ment of a Russian trench. He made a detour 
round our flank; flew from the direction of 
the corps command; and appeared over the 
headquarters of the divisional staff. Down 
came an order on Russian staff paper that 
a trench, newly taken, should be evacuated. 
The telephone to the corps staff was cut; mes- 
sages had been coming by motor-car; and it 
was believed that the aeroplane had been cho- 
sen for its speed. The trench was abandoned. 
The Austrians had used a captured aeroplane. 
Next day the same airman rose for some other 
ruse, but shots brought him down. The aero- 
plane shot at in my presence, known by its 
patched wing, was enterprising. It bombed 
Cossacks at Jaslo, and was seen east over be- 
sieged Przemysl. 

The soldiers condemned aeronautics. "A 
man is a man, and a hen is a hen." With Cos- 
sacks, supplanted by airmen in reconnaissance 
work, dislike was lost in contempt. They 
boasted that any man could drive a paper 
bird (bumazhnaya ptitsa), but that few airmen 



174 COLOURS OF WAR 

could ride a Cossack steed. This was proven. 
Wounded German airmen were forced to de- 
scend within our lines. Cossacks took them 
prisoners. In the spirit of the boast, a Cossack 
vowed that he would ride through the skies. 
The Germans stared; the Cossack climbed into 
the car. After his experimental fumbling, the 
aeroplane raced ahead, and rose. The fright- 
ened Cossack swore, pulled at levers, and bade 
the paper bird descend. The bird was fright- 
ened by threats — or it felt the right lever — 
for it dived and charged a tree. The aeroplane 
and the Cossack's nose suffered. "The Ger- 
mans were very angry." "Did they try a 
Cossack pony?" "No; we don't like airmen. 
Only God has a right to see down a man's 
neck." 

The artillery belonged to the Ninth Corps. 
The men were small, sunburnt, and active; 
they were bright and inclined, as men seldom 
are, to take war gaily. They paid small at- 
tention to the shells, greeting them, "Another 
grouse dead!" From a safe dugout, artil- 
lerists could be seen playing "little towns" 
with shrapnel-cases still hot. In peace, the 
art of the game is to disperse with big logs 
geometrical "little towns" of smaller logs. 
Years ago at Terioki, in Finland, I saw Gorki 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 175 

playing with the novelist and playwright Leo- 
nid Andreyeff. The throws from Gorki's long 
arms were like falling shells. 

On hills between this artillery position and 
Rzuchkowo the last Dunajec battle was fought. 
The field, pitted with shell craters, resembled 
a lunar landscape. The Austrians avenged 
their defeat with shells from twelve-inch mor- 
tars, from field-howitzers, from field-guns. On 
the space of a football field were twenty pits 
of the biggest shells. Between, sometimes 
overlapping, sometimes in, the big craters, 
were the craters of smaller shells. A landslide, 
caused by explosions, blocked a dugout, and 
nearly finished the tenants. Before my arrival, 
a twelve-inch shell, fired on low trajectory, 
sliced from an ammunition cart an angle of 
steel, and burst in a tempest of flame, smoke, 
and dust; the masked gun positions were 
shaken, and sods and sacks flew. The Rus- 
sians were retaliating. No target was in sight. 
Judged by the spouts of flame, evenly apart 
on one hill contour, the aim was good. An 
eight-inch gun which dropped three shells on 
the same spot at Tuchow was silenced. Every- 
body asked, "Where is Thick Bertha?" Thick 
Bertha, in reality the Pilsener, answered late 
in the day with a "portmanteau" (the Rus- 



176 COLOURS OF WAR 

sian analogue of " coal-box") that killed house- 
breakers in a Tarnow ruin. 

In this campaign the enemy, even when near, 
is unseen. Soldiers seldom see him in bayonet 
charges; the charges are stayed by bullets, or 
they win by the moral threat, before the foes 
meet. Only on the Dunajec, I saw the enemy 
free, fighting, and at work, as if I were in his 
lines. The trenches on the left bank were be- 
low and very near ours. Three hundred yards 
lay between. The artillery observation point, 
and behind, sheltered by a ridge, the nearest 
battery of field-guns, were on a hill above 
the trenches. The observation point was half 
a mile from the Austrians. It was reached 
through a sapped gallery. I found a straw- 
lined dugout with sleeping room for four 
officers; and, past the entrance, with only the 
eyes over the edge of the sap, a Zeiss periscope. 
I stared long at the enemy's lines. 

The Austrian artillery positions could not 
be seen; they were behind the hills, or on the 
hillsides, masked. Before the hills, flat land 
lay; and here, ten yards from the river, were 
the first infantry positions, faced by a ribbon 
of yellow clay, which may have been strewn 
with tread mines. There were three trenches, 
joined by saps, close together, with high, flimsy 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 177 

entanglements. Our entanglements are lower, 
broader, and better built. There was a mild 
exchange of rifle fire. The Austrians aimed 
high over our heads, threatening the peasants 
and cows. Men in the first trench fired, the 
men in the back trenches dug, some bent over 
newspapers or white plates. The trenches were 
thinly manned, perhaps because in daylight 
they could not be surprised. The men in 
the trenches might have been picked off by 
sharpshooters, but if heads were exposed bul- 
lets came. The enemy's infantry reserves, I 
learned, were behind the hill; sometimes, on 
chance, Russian shrapnel was sent there. Won- 
dering what the enemy would do to see our 
lines as we saw theirs, I left the observa- 
tion point. The enemy, I learned, had seen 
our lines. Captive balloons had been up. The 
trenches had been photographed. The obser- 
vation point escaped. It was an easy target; 
but except for stray bullets, nothing came its 

way. 

I spent the afternoon with the divisional 
staff, with engineer officers, and with infantry 
officers on relief, met on the way to head- 
quarters. Incredible stories were told of Aus- 
trian war-making. The Austrians, one man 
said, used their dead as dummies. On the 



178 COLOURS OF WAR 

Lower Dunajec, trenches were fifty yards apart. 
Whei attacking at dawn, after night fighting, 
the Russians saw heads strangely exposed over 
the enemy's trench. These, they judged, were 
dummies, and they laughed at the foe's sim- 
plicity, for infantrymen, when they are not 
firing, do not show their heads. The dum- 
mies were corpses. On our left in the hills, 
where trench and trench were closer, there 
were truces broken by outbursts of rage. The 
Austrians broke an agreement concerning food, 
the Russians dammed a gorge, and let wa- 
ter loose. As a rule, truces lasted, and as 
time passed without fighting, friendships were 
made. 

Thanks to prisoners and to spies, the Staff 
knew a great deal about Austrian dispositions. 
Prisoners were taken first to corps headquarters, 
then to army headquarters, and questioned 
twice. The first examination is more fruitful. 
In the emotion of safety prisoners forget the 
soldier's duty of silence; they feel a need for 
exchanging confidences; they ingratiate them- 
selves; or they talk merely for the love of talk- 
ing. After resting they change. "On the day 
of capture a prisoner's our spy; watch him, for 
the next day he's the enemy's." The officers 
told of a captured German who escaped from 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 179 

Gorlice, leaving behind his helmet. In the 
helmet were notes of our strength. 

The Staff gave me Austrian rifles, shells, and 
dumdum and explosive aiming bullets. The 
aiming bullets — Einschusspatrone — look like 
normal bullets; when shaken they rattle. The 
charge is fulminate of mercury. All armies are 
said to use them at night; the flash given at 
impact shows that the bullet has struck. The 
use in large numbers, or for any purpose but 
aiming, is against the customs of war. I saw a 
machine-gun belt full of them, all marked with 
Austria's eagle and the year of manufacture. 
We took the rifles to a quarry pit, and fired dum- 
dums and explosives into a beam. The dum- 
dums made a clean entry and a ragged exit; the 
explosives made a clean hole, charred through- 
out. The charge is weak. This is the only 
breach of the rules of war I have seen. I heard 
of others; officers made few charges, but they 
were made in good faith ; the stories of peasants, 
Jew traders, and Warsaw gossips were lies. 
Later, I tested new hand-grenades, flattish and 
glistening, like mustard-tins. These we cast into 
a pond, and they exploded on the ooze. It 
was a bright day, and towards the sky rose 
water-jets, thin and high as a house. 

I visited hospitals at Tarnow, later some 



180 COLOURS OF WAR 

etappe hospitals, and saw many wounded. The 
Ursuline nuns of Tarnow did good work, and 
Russian officers had respect for them. At a 
village on the Sandomierz road I found an 
etappe hospital in the hall of a Sokol league. 
There were thirty soldiers, all newly brought, in 
rows on sacking and straw, well tended by two 
young doctors, and very wretched. The girl 
helpers belonged to a nursing commune, put 
for the term of war under the Red Cross. As 
Russian women mostly do, they worked well; 
better than men. They were careful, practical, 
and devoted. Many years back I saw girls 
nursing scurvied Tartars in a breadless Kama- 
side village, while the men helpers begged that 
their names might be put in the papers. Here 
there was a girl, with a swollen hand which 
threatened blood-poisoning, cleaning from para- 
sites a very dirty man. 

As I drove to Pilzno, the boom from the Du- 
najec ceased, and a weaker boom came from the 
Beskides, forty miles south. In the passes the 
Austrians had big guns, and they fired without 
cease, sometimes to hit, sometimes to tease, 
sometimes to shake down snow. Snow and ice 
in the mountains retarded war. The Austrians 
retook Stanislau and Czernowitz, and reached 
our frontier. The Russians began the attempt 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 181 

to force the passes which lasted through March 
and April. This was the third general offensive. 
The first began in November, the second at 
Christmas. On the eve of the third attempt 
Russia held the Dukla Pass and part of the 
canton of Saros. Fighting went on everywhere, 
hardest on the Dukla, Lupkow, Uszok, and 
Tuchla fronts. In the centre, on the Lupkow 
Pass, leading to Homonna, heavy blows were 
aimed. 

The battle seemed to be the crisis of the cam- 
paign. It brought great sacrifices. The tactics 
were to shrink from no loss while there was 
hope, to attack when attack failed, and to coun- 
ter-attack when the enemy won. Given the 
elements of success, these tactics are right and 
humane. In failure, the existence of the army 
is threatened; when losses reach a certain height, 
the army, although the organisation, artillery, 
and technical equipment remain, loses its com- 
bative value. After a chain of bloody combats 
this attack failed. Success would not have prof- 
ited it. A week after the battle of the Passes 
ended, an Austrian and German army broke 
the Cracow front, and ten days later it reached 
the San. Had the Carpathian armies con- 
quered and marched on Buda Pest, not a man 
would have returned. 



182 COLOURS OF WAR 

Officers say that in killed and wounded the 
battle of the Passes was the costliest of the war. 
Germans called it "the grave of the Russian 
Army." Losses were great, but smaller, I be- 
lieve, than in the battle of Lodz. For duration, 
steadfastness on both sides, and skill in meeting 
difficulties, all mountain fights were excelled. 
Snow lay shoulder-high on plane slopes; the 
drifts were as deep as wells; the cold was in- 
tense; and there were mists. Sunshine melted 
the surface snow, making slides of ice. While 
the Russians fought Arctic winter, the Aus- 
trians, ascending the south slopes, had an early 
spring; they struggled in torrents of snow water 
and abysms of mud. The Austrians had their 
backs to the sun; the Russians were dazzled as 
they stormed the hill fortresses ; the glare across 
the snow hampered aim. The Eighth Army 
was in trouble for supplies. Wheeled carts 
would not move, and the slopes were too steep 
and the snow too deep for sledges. Supplies 
came on endless chains of sleds with broad 
runners, hauled by men at the summits. Trains 
were swallowed up, and had to be dug out. 
Guns were floated over the snow on platforms, 
and dead men on planks were slid down the 
hills for burial. 

The men marched, shot, and shed their blood 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 183 

in the snow. A hospital worker told me that 
he passed near Baligrod a winter battle-field. 
He looked from above on a slope where the 
snow, trodden only in parts, was white; and 
red flowers seemed to grow in it. It was pain- 
ful to see wounded men, on their way to the 
first-aid points, leaving trails of blood; to see 
them, bandaged, struggling through snow to 
the field-hospitals. Bearers who followed the 
trails found a soldier frozen to death. Hoping 
to stem the blood, he had pressed through the 
snow his shattered hand. 

Snow tactics were devised. There was snow- 
field engineering; both sides faced the problem 
of attacking with infantry over snow-fields. The 
end of March saw snow-fortress fighting. This 
was at the Tartar's Saddle on the Lupkow front. 
At night, after trouble with supplies had caused 
a Russian withdrawal, the Austrians advanced. 
They had infantry on skis, guns on runners, and 
transport sleds. The snow was breast-high. In 
the dawn, when our airmen, rising from the 
plain, soared to reconnoitre, the Austrians were 
seen, high up, in trenches terraced on the snow 
slopes. Snow will not stop bullets. Snow water, 
provided by the sun, had been poured on the 
snow parapets. At night the soaked snow froze, 
and made bullet-proof walls. The aerial for- 



184 COLOURS OF WAR 

tress overlooked our lines. To take it was hard; 
field-guns higher in the pass poured shrapnel; 
and machine guns were fired from turrets of 
frozen snow. Some of the Austrian guns were 
silenced; the ice parapets split. An infantry 
attack had to follow. Infantry could not cross 
the snow. In darkness the snow was sapped. 
The Austrians saw the sappers, and renewed 
their fusillade. At dawn our men were fifty 
yards from the enemy. They began to lose; 
the soft snow concealed them, but it let bullets 
through. The Russians cast grenades. The 
Austrians answered with grenades. From the 
concussion, snow swept down the mountain, and 
buried friend and foe. The Austrians came off 
better. Their frozen parapets held; and when 
the snow sea ceased to move, they struggled 
out. A dozen Russians perished. Tunnels were 
dug through snow. An enemy's observation 
outpost was housed in a shed on a snow slope. 
Not far off Russians shivered in trenches and 
dugouts of snow turned to ice by sun and night 
frost. Hoping to surprise the enemy, our men 
tunnelled. The snow was water-soaked; and at 
first the roof held. When the tunnellers were 
near the shed, the roof caved in; heads emerged; 
a rifle went off; there was a collapse with sounds 
so disturbing that the Austrians fled, flounder- 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 185 

ing through the snow wilderness. Our men were 
so pleased by their successful failure that they 
forbore to shoot. 

On the Dukla-Lupkow front the fighting was 
spread. Isolated units could not keep in touch. 
Forces had successes or failures hours, some- 
times days, before the results of actions fought 
close to them were known. Half a battalion 
vanished; it attacked and dispersed Austrians 
on a remote ridge. Snow fell; the path was 
lost; and the Russians were heard of no more. 
There was no telephone; clouds prevented sig- 
nalling; in the roar of a battle forty miles long, 
shot signals were unheard; ski runners perished 
in a ravine. The soldiers made snow dugouts, 
wrapped up their wounded, and waited. Next 
day the Austrians, as they returned to the at- 
tack, were seen from below. A force sent to 
attack them found the lost men, some with 
frost-bites, all too tired to move. 

Mists, made by melting and evaporation in 
the March sunshine, hampered work. Aus- 
trians, marching south on the Uszok front, blun- 
dered in the mist against a battalion of our men. 
Russian forces were higher in the hills; the bat- 
talion, hearing the tramp, feared to shoot lest 
the invisible men were friends. The Austrians 
shot. Still believing the shooters were comrades, 



186 COLOURS OF WAR 

our men lay down and shouted, "Friends!" 
The Austrians fired again. One of the Russian 
forces on the hills returned. The mist rose; 
the Austrians found Russians in front and be- 
hind. The Russians still feared to shoot, as 
bullets which passed the Austrian ranks would 
have hit friends. By firing on both sides the 
Austrians might have mown down both enemy 
forces, but, seeing retreat cut, they surrendered. 
In an engagement on this front a Little Russian 
signaller lost his life. After the officers were 
killed, he took charge of an infantry outpost on 
a hill. The Hungarians threatened from all 
sides. With the side of a beef -tin the soldier- 
commander signalled for help. When help came, 
only three soldiers were left. The signaller died 
last. 

There were fierce bayonet fights, many bloody 
repulses of attacks and counter-attacks, and 
some position war. The position war was made 
necessary by the fortification of the transverse 
valleys after the last Austrian advance. Re- 
doubts were buried in the slopes, masked with 
snow and pine saplings, so that they were in- 
visible even from near. There were terraced 
trenches of Russian kind, well masked, with 
loopholed breastworks of logs. To destroy these 
was hard. The attackers' guns moved slowly; 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 187 

the defenders' guns were posted in advance. 
Shrapnel fire from masked batteries delayed a 
division two days. Crossing a hillside at night, 
our men took three works from the side with the 
bayonet. Later, works were found protected at 
the side with entanglements. Magyar Honved 
units, perhaps because they fought for Hun- 
gary's defence, showed greatest resolution. In 
April a Honved force, newly come from Ho- 
monna, assailed Russians who were advancing. 
Unable to intrench, the Russians sought shel- 
ter behind a pine-covered ridge. The Magyars 
three times stormed against our rifles and ma- 
chine guns. They lost half their number, re- 
tired to trenches, were attacked and shattered, 
but held out. Reinforcements came for them 
and for us. The Magyars stormed again, and 
failed. A counter-attack cast them out, and 
few escaped. 

As winter passed, trouble with mud and 
stones replaced trouble with snow. The mud 
was deep. In the fights for the Orawa valley 
stones did the work of projectiles. Sometimes 
through concussion, sometimes by the impact 
of shells, boulders in instable equilibrium were 
sent flying. An avalanche of stones which tore 
down the Ostry caused the evacuation of 
trenches. The enemy took the lowest trench, 



188 COLOURS OF WAR 

and held it, sheltered against fire from above 
by a salient of rock. The slope over the upper 
trench was covered with stones. When firing 
began, the stones bounded down. Later explo- 
sions brought on a stone bombardment of our 
trenches, which killed some men and bruised 
many. The soldiers covered their heads and 
spines with folded coats, haversacks, and logs, 
and crouched or lay. When the enemy saw our 
trouble, he fired shells into the stones. The 
men crept sidelong from the trench, and ran, 
under rifle fire. Stones bounded over the salient 
into the lower trench, now held by Austrians; 
and the Austrians ran. When the stones tired 
of falling, the fight, this time with hand-bombs, 
was resumed. 

Mine war, in the style of Flanders, played a 
part in the Austrian and German counter-attacks 
in the Orawa and Opor valleys. The Russians 
turned the hills into forts. Plane slopes with a 
clear field of fire and deep gullies in the valleys 
helped the defence. The Austrians of Hofmann, 
part of the German Linsingen's command, bored 
galleries across the valleys, sometimes under the 
gullies. They blew up our trenches, stormed 
the Zimin and the Ostry, and at great cost won 
the Orawa valley a few days before Radko Dimi- 
triyeff's defeat caused a retreat from all the 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 189 

passes. It is no puzzle why blood was shed in 
frontal attacks when the plan was ripe to re- 
cover Galicia by an advance from Cracow. The 
enemy's way is to disturb all fronts. In strat- 
egy, as in tactics, the pressure is high. 

The main change from the battle of the 
Passes was a Russian loss on the Dukla front. 
The Austrians pushed north from near Sztropko 
to beyond Krajna Polyana, near the frontier. 
They failed to reach the watershed. East and 
west their gains dwindled to points. Failure 
casts no aspersion on the Russians. The cour- 
age shown was great; and if blunders were 
made, they lay in the strategical problem itself. 
The positions were too strong; the Austrians, 
backed by Germans under German generals, 
defended with obstinacy, and counter-attacked 
with fire. Attacks that fail bring the judg- 
ment that they ought not to have been made, 
but that implies foreknowledge. Risks must be 
taken; and as a march west against Prussia 
was doomed, the military and political destruc- 
tion of Austria-Hungary was the only aim. 

My belief after the battle of the Passes was 
that no new offensive could be tried unless 
Russia's allies in the West shook the Germans, 
and compelled them to transfer men. From 
the little I saw, and from all that I heard, it 



190 COLOURS OF WAR 

seemed that the defensive in Galicia could be 
maintained and resumed; the Cracow front 
would be held as before; and, in spite of Ger- 
man and Austrian successes in the Beskides, 
Russia, if she ceased from attacking, could 
hold the northern slopes. This judgment as- 
sumed that no more German troops would 
come. In the passes the Russians were strong, 
and the Cracow front looked impregnable. It 
had been held for months, it ran without break 
from the Vistula to the hills, and it was forti- 
fied with every device. The Western campaign 
taught that such a front might be gnawed at<, 
but that it could not be swallowed at once. 
This teaching is disproved. A strongly posted 
army, confident of strength, kept in inaction by 
strategical exigencies, spared trench fighting, 
may fall a prey to a foe who has initiative, 
and the boldness of conception needed for vast 
operations. The Tenth Army of Baron v. 
Sievers perished from such causes, and in May 
perished the army of Radko Dimitriyeff. 

After my visit, the Staff moved from Pilzno 
to Jaslo, a town to the south. Radko Dimitri- 
yeff was at Jaslo when the attack began. The 
attackers were the three or four corps of the 
Archduke Joseph, the German division which 
stood in February on the right, and German 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 191 

reinforcements of unknown strength. The plan 
was conceived by the Austrian Chief of Staff, 
Baron Conrad v. Hoetzendorff; the command 
was given to General v. Mackensen, the victor 
in the flank attack from Thorn, which ended 
our advance against Posen and Silesia. The 
Vienna Staff report says that the Third Army 
comprised the 9th, 10th, 12th, 24th and 3rd 
Caucasus Corps, with reserve divisions. On a 
front of seventy miles the enemy concentrated 
fifteen hundred guns; there were many Austrian 
30.5 mortars, and at least two 42 cm. Pilsener 
howitzers. The Pilseners were used to prepare 
for storm the important height, 419. The 
Lower Dunajec is dammed against floods. The 
Austrians, working at night, pierced the dam; 
at dawn they blocked the hole, and they got 
ready, greased and on wheels, their pontoons. 
By a bombardment of four hours on the morn- 
ing of the 2nd of May, the Russian position 
was battered. The Austrians and Germans 
crossed the river; farther north they marched 
against Gorlice, and they stormed our lines. 
The lines were pierced at six places, and by the 
afternoon the front was crushed. The best 
resistance was made by the centre, west of 
Tarnow; there, was a good general with a 
good corps. The penetration of both wings 



192 COLOURS OF WAR 

and pressure on the centre itself compelled re- 
treat. History has no more remarkable frontal 
axxacK* 

The Austrians and Germans advanced rap- 
idly, crossed the Wisloka, captured Pilzno, Jaslo, 
Krosno, and Brzowow; eleven days after the 
battle they crossed the San, and a month after 
the battle they retook Przemysl. Their ad- 
vance threatened the communications, one after 
the other, of the armies in the passes. From 
Dukla to the Opor valley there were hurried 
retreats, the enemy pursuing. No Russians 
were left in Hungary. Some units failed to 
escape. The Nida positions, strongly fortified, 
in South Poland were outflanked; they were 
evacuated, and the Austrians regained Kielce. 
The Russians were expelled from Bukowina 
and the Austrians crossed into Bessarabia. 
The Germans and Austrians advanced rapidly 
down the Carpathian slopes and crossed the 
Dnieper. The Russians made some vigorous 
counter-attacks, but had no general success. 
The attackers crossed into South Poland, near 
Tarnogrod. They marched on Lemberg, cap- 
tured the Grodek and Wereszyca lines, the 
city's natural defences, strongly fortified, to 
the west; and on the 22nd of June retook Lem- 
berg. 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 193 

The Dunajec offensive seemed at first to be 
merely the beginning of a campaign for the 
recovery of Galicia. It bore no obvious im- 
mediate relation to the struggle for Poland, 
and did not foreshadow the campaigns in the 
Baltic Provinces and Lithuania, still less the 
greater campaign for the overthrowal of Rus- 
sia, which is now under way. Russians held 
that Austria and Germany, in spite of the new 
victory, were too weak to attempt a general 
invasion. Before Lemberg was lost this view 
was shown to be mistaken. The battle of Gor- 
lice-Tarnow must be regarded as one link in a 
chain of offensive operations aimed from the 
first at the destruction of Russia's armies and 
the conquest of Poland and West Russia. 

A cause of the Austro-German success was 
the superior ability of the two Powers to create 
new forces from their stores of untrained men 
and of material. During the winter, in which, 
except for the Masuria battle, they were in- 
active, Austria and Germany called into being 
powerful new armies. Here they were competing 
with the Entente Powers, and they were bound 
to win. Against Russia they had the advan- 
tage of great manufacturing resources; against 
France they had the advantage of larger stocks 
of untrained men (in the years before the war, 



194 COLOURS OF WAR 

the German army took little more than half 
the men who reached service age); and against 
England they had the advantage of having in- 
telligent, patriotic Governments, really intent 
on national defence. A competent Russian 
tells me that in the seven months before the 
Dunajec battle, Austria and Germany, in addi- 
tion to preparing for the field their men of the 
older classes of reserves, equipped and trained 
1,500,000 men. 

The first sign of an Austro-German offensive 
all along the line was the seizure by Germany 
of Libau, Russia's only ice-free port in the 
north. After the recapture of Lemberg, the 
Austro-German armies of Galicia turned north. 
The invasion armies in Central Poland pressed 
heavily on our front; and it appeared that 
large German armies under Hindenburg were 
operating in North Poland, Lithuania, and 
Courland. The immediate aim of Austro- 
German strategy was to envelop and cut off, 
or force to retreat, the Russian armies defend- 
ing Warsaw. That was to be effected by an 
advance north from Galicia between Vistula 
and Bug, by a break through the Narew-Bobr- 
Niemen fortress line, and by attacks on the 
forces west of Warsaw. The Russians were 
too weak to resist. The retention of the Vis- 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 195 

tula position meant their destruction. Even 
before the Narew fortress line was broken by 
the capture of Pultusk and Roshan, Warsaw's 
fate was sealed, and the city, together with 
Ivangorod, was abandoned on the 5th of Au- 
gust. The Staff proclaimed that it would hold 
the Bug line. This was a front stretching from 
near Riga to Kovno, from Kovno along the 
Niemen to Grodno, thence to Brest-Litovsk, 
and along the Bug to the Galician frontier. 
From Kovno south the line follows closely the 
political frontier of Congress Poland. The 
plan involved the abandonment of Poland, 
Courland, and the western half of Kovno 
province. The straightness of the front, the 
fortresses, the Niemen, the Bieloviezh Forest, 
the Bug, and the Pripet marshes made the 
new position strong. The plan failed because 
even far from their frontiers the military 
superiority of Austria and Germany remained 
operative; in the north the invaders threatened 
fresh envelopment along the lines Kovno- Vilna 
and Mitau-Dvinsk; and in the south they be- 
gan an advance east of the Bug against Kovel 
and the Rovno fortress group. On the 26th of 
August, after the storming of Kovno and Novo- 
georgievsk proved that no fortress could with- 
stand German attack, Brest-Litovsk was aban- 



196 COLOURS OF WAR 

doned. A rear-guard defence was made. The 
Austrians stormed Lutsk; Grodno, the last of 
the new defence line's fortresses, was taken on 
September the 3rd, and on September the 19th 
fell Vilna. So Russia lost nearly all barriers, 
natural and artificial, against invasion of her 
home provinces. For future defence she must 
rely on what is left of her field armies, on her 
great distances, her winter climate, the diffi- 
culty of offensive warfare in a country with 
few roads and railways, and the chance of re- 
lief from the strategy of her Allies. 

If Russia's disasters of last summer are not 
retrieved, the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow will rank 
as one of the decisive battles of the world. 
No battle makes so plain the meaning of strat- 
egy and the moral penalty of defeat. The force 
defeated on the Cracow front was not a tenth 
of the army; its destruction caused the retreat, 
and in part the dissolution of armies four times 
as great; it caused the loss of the Carpathian 
strategical frontier, the loss of the fortress key 
of Galicia; and the loss of all the fortresses with 
some thousands of guns, and the loss of pris- 
oners declared by the captors to have num- 
bered in the four months, May to August, over 
1,100,000. The battle showed to most what 
from the first was plain to a few, the superior- 



GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 197 

ity of the Central Powers in all the factors 
which count in war. 

I left Galicia long before this battle. The 
visit strengthened an old conviction, confirmed 
in the present war on other fronts, that the 
Russian army has brave soldiers and zealous 
leaders. An inexpert eye found little to criticise. 
Clothing, feeding, and the supply of ammuni- 
tion seemed good. Until our Ministers revealed 
the fact to the enemy, it was not known that 
there were not enough shells. I saw no soldier 
without a good overcoat and good boots. The 
etappe service worked well; and morale and 
discipline were good. Relations of officers to 
men were fraternal. In technical sense, the ar- 
tillerists and engineers stood highest; these were 
the most important branches. The infantry 
officers seemed to be up to their work. Of the 
Staff I could not judge. I saw that, owing to 
the good order in the organisation and to the 
tactical stagnation, it had little to do. 

The army's conduct continued to be good. 
Poles whom I questioned on the way back 
agreed. The soldiers, true peasants, were rough, 
idle, and easy-going; the prohibition of drink 
prevented the excesses they are given to in 
peace. My last glimpse of the Third Army was 
at Mielec, a townlet on the railway to Sando- 



198 COLOURS OF WAR 

mierz, where transport men sang, and a sapper 
held under his overcoat a child's squeaking 
doll, and by pressure brought squeaks from his 
chest. Probably no child ever stared more, and 
no soldier showed more conceit. 



CHAPTER IX 
ARMS AND MEN 

AFTER a small success, an officer asked 
/-\ me why Russia, the winner in many 
small affairs, gained no victory over the 
Germans and held no German soil. Some suc- 
cesses had been gained by inferior numbers. 
With superior numbers in the whole theatre, 
Russia ought to win. The officer asked why 
resources were not making themselves felt; 
the Entente combination had untold resources; 
it had been organising them for a year; but the 
position of Germany and Austria improved 
every day. These questions led me to combine 
some thoughts about the nature of the war 
with observations and reported facts. 

A war fought in a very large theatre by large 
numbers, operating in dislocated armies, is 
certain to be won by the side which has most 
power — most of the sum of numbers, physique, 
morale, equipment, leadership. Many past wars 
were not won by power, they were decided 
by single battles: and the single battles were 
won not by power, but by impromptu thoughts 

199 



200 COLOURS OF WAR 

of leaders, by mistakes, omens, accidents of 
weather. The better armies with the better 
generals lost. The present war cannot be de- 
cided in that way. 

The war consists of several campaigns in de- 
tached theatres. In each theatre each side has 
several armies, far apart; and each army has 
several corps, each holding a longer front than 
was held by the greatest army of past wars. 
Mistakes, impromptu thoughts, accidents of 
weather may decide small affairs: the collisions 
of brigades or divisions, perhaps a fight between 
corps. They will not decide a battle. A battle 
is a string of detached engagements along a 
great front; if not one-sided, the battle is gained 
by success in the greater number of the im- 
portant operations. One mistake or one acci- 
dent will not outweigh superiority of power; 
the chance victory of an inferior army would 
not decide a campaign in which several armies 
fighting many battles are engaged, much less 
would it decide the war. 

Great battles, properly fought, resemble tech- 
nical undertakings. The chance of their normal 
course being disturbed is not much greater than 
the chance of a canal project failing. The 
canal engineer draughts his plan, measures the 
material and labour needed to overcome re- 



ARMS AND MEN 201 

sistance, provides the material and labour, and 
sets to work. If he has planned according to 
the rules of canal-building, measured the re- 
sistance accurately, and provided material and 
labour, he can hardly fail. He will not begin 
the work without plans, without calculating re- 
sistance, without sufficient material and work- 
men, comforting himself with the knowledge 
that he is doing his best. The battle of Tannen- 
berg, the Winter Battle of Masuria, and the 
battle of Gorlice-Tarnow were executed by the 
victors as engineers dig canals. The victors 
measured the power of the armies they pro- 
posed to destroy; they collected material and 
men sufficient to overcome the resistance of the 
enemy's power, and attacked. The operations 
were too vast and differentiated to be disturbed 
by chance. The victors did not undertake op- 
erations beyond their strength. If they were 
short of material and men, they did not — con- 
soled by the conviction that they were doing 
their best — attack according to plan, or resort 
to a makeshift plan. Where they miscalculated 
the resistance and doubted a complete success, 
they abandoned the plan, and made another, 
a new, not a makeshift, plan commensurate 
with the material and men they were sure of. 
An instance is their refusal to fight on the 



202 COLOURS OF WAR 

Vistula in October, 1914. The strategy of the 
Entente in France and Flanders has been to 
get what material and men could be got; and 
to attack, not with the conviction of accom- 
plishing specific operations of importance, but 
with the hope of doing the best possible and 
causing the enemy loss. Battles were victories 
or defeats according as they gained or lost 
ground, not according as they accomplished or 
failed to accomplish strategical aims planned in 
advance. This strategy was costly ; in the East, 
the enemy with smaller losses conquered and 
reconquered provinces, and took guns by the 
hundred and prisoners by the hundred thou- 
sand. 

Great wars, decided by numerous victories in 
battles which are themselves not materially in- 
fluenced by chance, resemble business under- 
takings of great size. They differ from the wars 
of the past as ocean-liner companies differ from 
groups of merchant adventurers with single 
ships. In the ocean company the absolute num- 
ber of accidents is greater, but the influence of 
accidents on the operations is slight. The war 
is on such a scale that nothing can prevent 
the victory of power. Persons who could accu- 
rately measure the power of the antagonists 
could tell without fail which would win. 



ARMS AND MEN 203 

The side with the greater power is not the 
side with the greater resources. Wars are fought 
with men and arms which do certain things; 
they can no more be fought with resources than 
canals can be dug with pig iron directed by men 
who are not engineers. The promise of victory 
by resources is made by rulers caught unpre- 
pared for war, because it condones their negli- 
gence and postpones their punishment. His- 
tory is a record of the victories of power over 
resources. Fifty years ago, the power of Prus- 
sia beat the greater resources of the Austrian 
league; four years later German power beat 
French resources; Japan with little resources 
beat China; Japan beat Russia; the Balkan 
Confederation beat Turkey. Older history is 
the same. The disappearance of the old world- 
empires was caused by the victory of power over 
resources, by nothing else. 

The belief that resources beat power springs 
from the belief that resources can be trans- 
formed into power so as to reverse the first de- 
cision of arms. This may happen if the initial 
disparity in power is small. In general, the be- 
lief is false. Resources take time to turn into 
power; and war goes on. The intellectual or 
technical backwardness, which has hindered the 
accumulation of power before war, persists; a 



204 COLOURS OF WAR 

government which cannot prepare in the ease of 
peace is twice unfit to prepare in the confusion 
of war. Where land is won by the victor, re- 
sources are lost to him. The Germans gained 
resources by the capture of Lille, Lodz, Libau, 
and Warsaw. The superiority in power grows 
and the inferiority in resources disappears. New 
power produced by the beaten side is of lower 
quality : it is less powerful. Soldiers have short 
training, officers are improvised, commanders 
have not had practice in handling large forces; 
the morale may be good from desperation, but 
the victor's morale is good through success. The 
new power cannot be applied with advantage. 
To keep the old power on its legs, the new power, 
produced in driblets, is sent to war in driblets; 
the accession of strength replaces losses and 
makes material for new losses, but it is never 
adequate to give the superiority of power needed 
for victory. The will to win with stronger ar- 
mies led by better generals, which is the essence 
of victory, is replaced by hope of wearing the 
enemy out. The true doctrine, attrition, is 
falsely applied. A log of wood will not rub away 
a file. The losses of defeat, in men, material, 
and morale, exceed the losses of victory. The 
transformation of resources into power cannot 
keep pace with the loss of power. Fall of 



ARMS AND MEN 205 

morale, discontent, finance, the hopelessness of 
warring on a basis which assumes the enemy's 
superiority, bring the war to an end. The po- 
litical and moral condition of Russia is there- 
fore a vital factor in judging whether Russia 
can repair her defeats. The war of Russia 
against Japan shows how little attrition avails. 
The attrition doctrine affects injuriously the 
conduct of war. The side with less power and 
more resources believes that Nature is its ally; 
it neglects the one chance of retrieving defeat. 
The chance lies in the creation of the most pos- 
sible power of the highest possible kind in the 
shortest possible time. In the present war, this 
meant that England should cease boasting of 
resources, money-bags, and silver bullets, and 
take to conscription, subordinating, as Ger- 
many and France do, all state and private in- 
terests to the making of war. 

In nations prepared for war to the limit of 
their abilities, resources and power are nearly 
the same thing. The human resources have 
been turned into soldiers; the material re- 
sources have so far been turned into weapons 
and supplies that there are enough for all men. 
In measure as resources have been turned into 
power the war is national. To Germany the 
war is more national than to Russia. In both 



206 COLOURS OF WAR 

it is nearer a national war than any war of the 
past. The soldiers are not dominant races or 
hereditary fighting castes. The armies contain 
the nation's qualities and quantities. The na- 
tion's physique is the army's endurance; the 
nation's contentment and discipline are the 
army's morale; the nation's technical level is 
the army's equipment. 

The difference between Russia and Germany 
is more marked than the difference between 
other belligerents. Russia could not be as strong 
a military state as Germany. Russia surpasses 
Germany in numbers. The standard of health 
is lower; the absolute number of men fit for 
military service is greater. The Germans are a 
better disciplined people, more contented with 
rulers and institutions. Technically, Germany 
is superior; her superiority has increased in the 
past century as result of education and indus- 
trialisation and of the stagnation of Russia. 
There is no reason known why Russia should 
not produce more men with military talent than 
Germany; but there is smaller chance for mili- 
tary talent to show itself. The Germans profit 
from their good school of leadership. The bal- 
ance of national fitness for war is to Germany's 
credit. Competent Russian soldiers knew this; 
they did not expect too much too soon; and 



ARMS AND MEN 207 

they ascribed our rhetoric about the march on 
Berlin and the steam-roller to German agents 
working for our defeat. A general showed me 
with anger in an English picture newspaper a 
portrait of Hindenburg, described, "He is Fly- 
ing for His Life." A few days before, the Field- 
Marshal had captured 300 guns and 100,000 
prisoners. In view of the zeal which these pa- 
triots showed for our defeat, their disappoint- 
ment causes surprise. The Russian army did 
not disappoint. Relatively to Russia's stage of 
development, Russia's army is good. The share 
of Russian thought, work, and wealth spent on 
the army is greater than the share of German 
thought, work, and wealth spent on the German 
army. 

In physique the Russian army compares best 
with the German. Abundance of conscripts pre- 
vents the enrolment of weak men. Men of the 
active army are strong. The health of reserv- 
ists has been affected by bad feeding, drink, 
and unsanitary housing. The war puts severe 
strains on muscles and nerves. A prisoner told 
me that between the battle of Tannenberg and 
Hindenburg's retreat from Warsaw, he fought 
in six actions. Soldiers broke down. Near 
Radom, a company of sleeping Germans was 
captured. Of fighting near Kovno in June, a 



208 COLOURS OF WAR 

German report says: "When our indefatigable 
men pushed forward to the railway-station Kos- 
lowa Buda they found a sleeping army. Three 
thousand Russians had thrown themselves down, 
hoping next day to find an opening for escape. 
They were made prisoners." The outnum- 
bered Austrians in the first Lemberg battles 
expressed joy when rifle ammunition failed; 
they could sleep; shells killed sleepers; a sol- 
dier fell asleep on his bayonet and died. Ex- 
haustion hindered pursuit. After three weeks 
of fighting round Lodz, the Germans could not 
follow up their success. German marches in 
the battle of Tannenberg and the Winter Battle 
of Masuria are remarkable. I saw at Warsaw 
Siberians who had walked fifty miles in two 
days; they looked well. The Russian peasant 
at home is not a walker or a worker; heavy 
field labour lasts a few weeks; in winter, if he 
does not work in a town factory, he idles and 
sleeps. 

The nerves of soldiers are shaken by battles 
and privations; but few men go mad. A field 
surgeon told me that soldier minds stand war 
strains better than the minds of civilians; the 
civilian afflictions: bellicose paranoia, halluci- 
nations, and pathological credulity are rare. 
Among prisoners the chance of mental derange- 



ARMS AND MEN 209 

ment is high. Success in battle fosters mental 
health. Trench life, affecting physical health, 
reacts unfavourably. Insanity is seldom traced 
to war excitement. I heard of a soldier who 
lost his reason through the tameness of war. 
He was a nervous, imaginative man, spoiled 
by reading war histories. A Pole went mad 
through loving Germans. He began by hating 
them. He was in charge of prisoners, mostly 
inoffensive, soft youths; this caused a reaction. 
He fed the prisoners, gave them tobacco, began 
to like them, and talked only of them. His com- 
rades nicknamed him "The Kaiser's groom." 
He put on a prisoner's helmet, and ran about. 
In the dusk he was taken for a fugitive, and was 
shot dead. 

In its morale, which is not homogeneous, Rus- 
sia's army represents the national life. It dif- 
fers from the German army, which takes a sin- 
gle stamp from unity of education, discipline, 
and patriotism. In Russia between highest 
and lowest is a gap. At present, patriotic feel- 
ing is strong. Family and school discipline are 
weak; oppression has exalted revolt, indepen- 
dently of causes, into a virtue. Education de- 
termines conduct in battle. The more back- 
ward a soldier, the greater is his resistance to 
influences which depress and elate. Ignorant 



210 COLOURS OF WAR 

men do not understand military conditions; 
they are insensitive about their personal safety, 
do not easily take fright, and show no love for 
taking risks. The regimental officers have an 
insensitive spirit. They are not true Intelli- 
gents; in provincial garrison towns they keep 
to themselves; they are awkward and shy in 
Intelligent society. The soldiers and most offi- 
cers have the quality ascribed to the army as a 
whole: they are stubborn. Russian life is not 
all insensibility. The Intelligence is hypersen- 
sitive. The Intelligents of the army are staff 
officers, many officers in the guards' and metro- 
politan line regiments, and some officers of line 
units in the country. They are well-educated 
men, socially connected with the highest Intel- 
ligence; they can show more scholars, poets, 
and musicians than the German officers' corps; 
and if they have politics the politics are often 
Left, that is Intelligent. The distance in think- 
ing and feeling between the two army elements 
is great. 

This may explain mysteries in present history. 
The army is stubborn ; it is tough in defeat, and 
slow to gain stimulus from success. There are 
times when the toughness dissolves; the times 
when the stimulus acts quickly are few. The 
army resisted Hindenburg before Lodz for three 



ARMS AND MEN 211 

weeks, and escaped, leaving few prisoners and 
guns; in the spring, it fought seven weeks for 
the Carpathian passes. Beside these are Tan- 
nenberg and Gorlice-Tarnow, defeats followed 
by dissolution. Many incidents indicate that 
the Russians do best in prolonged, hammering 
operations which exclude surprises. In sur- 
prise, appears an element which is not stubborn- 
ness, and may be Intelligent hypersensitiveness. 
Stubbornness, being inertia, limits victory. The 
Austrians, after their beating near Lemberg in 
September, were let escape; no -advantage was 
taken of both invaders' embarrassment on the 
Vistula in October, 1914; the two corps of Litz- 
mann surrounded at Tuschin in November got 
away. The Germans took risks which they 
would not have taken against Germans; they 
exposed their flanks, weakened their centre 
when dealing flank blows, and succeeded in 
operations (the raid to Libau), which invited 
defeat. Sometimes the Russians tried sharp 
attacks on the weak points; small successes, 
not pushed home, were gained. Victories like 
Tannenberg were not won even against the 
Austrians. The sensitiveness or quickness of 
part of the army was not enough. Such opera- 
tions need an army which is all quick, sensitive, 
accurate, specialised, and homogeneous. 



212 COLOURS OF WAR 

The morale of Russians under loss is good. 
In operations where there was no surprise, large 
units after heavy losses stood fast. The soldier 
is brave in face of death, and in pain brave and 
insensitive. The defeats were not caused by 
soldiers breaking under heavy losses; the heav- 
iest losses were suffered after defeat, and many 
more men were lost in prisoners than in casu- 
alties. In defeat the peasant soldier needs un- 
ceasing guidance; confusion above has bad 
results. For other moral qualities, obedience, 
cheerfulness, and comradeship, the soldiers may 
be praised. 

German technical superiority is fully opera- 
tive. Bad communications influenced the cam- 
paign. The isolation of Russia from Europe, 
and the dependence of Russia upon Europe for 
certain supplies, were foreseen; they lay in the 
nature of a great war. No communication was 
provided; the ports which are ice-free were 
neglected; to Archangel ran a single-track light 
railway, the ice-breakers were inferior and the 
wharfage and anchorage inadequate. The re- 
moval of these defects would have cost no more 
than a few years' maintenance of an army corps, 
and would have been worth many corps. Bad 
roads and scarcity of railways in Poland, in par- 
ticular the want of concentric railways around 



ARMS AND MEN 213 

the Prussian-Galician sack, made it hard to meet 
surprises, and made an offensive campaign, even 
if the other conditions existed, impossible. Rail- 
ways were not built, it is said, because Germany 
could not be resisted west of the Vistula. It is 
impossible to gain victory on the assumption 
that the enemy will win, and that the way to 
foil him is to prepare for defeat. 

In artillery, the technical factor which, after 
railways, has most influenced the war, Germany 
started well supplied, with ability to repair and 
replace. She began with 2832 field-guns against 
the Russian 4434; 900 field-howitzers against 
444; and 400 heavy howitzers against 64. Ger- 
many strengthened her artillery with many cap- 
tured Russian guns. The German corps has 
108 field-guns against the Russian 96; the 
weight of projectiles is as 10 to 7. In middle 
stages of the campaign, the German heavy ar- 
tillery has been mostly in North Poland and 
Galicia. Concentration of guns, and concentra- 
tion tactics in their use, account for many vic- 
tories. The fire of 1500 guns destroyed in a 
few hours defences which the Third Army took 
months to build. The battle of Lodz was won 
by shrapnel. The dominance of artillery is re- 
flected by the campaign. The first German 
victories were won near the frontier in autumn 



214 COLOURS OF WAR 

or winter. The heavy artillery could not be 
quickly moved over roads soft from rain or 
snow. When the attackers reached the imme- 
diate aim of destroying a Russian force, they re- 
coiled, or, having no heavy guns, were stopped. 
The victory of Gorlice-Tarnow was won in May, 
when the good Galician roads were dry. In 
capture of prisoners or guns on the spot, it was 
less complete than Tannenberg, but the guns 
kept pace with the pursuit, and the pursuit 
lasted till Lemberg's fall. 

Russian and German leadership cannot be 
compared. German strategy bears the impress 
of the will and of the choice of ways. Russian 
strategy was imposed. As long as Russia had 
the initiative, strategy was imposed by the 
initial conditions of the war; afterwards it 
was imposed by the enemy. The envelopment 
of Poland by Prussian and Galician territory, 
Austria's relative weakness, and the defence- 
less frontier of Galicia dictated the march on 
Lemberg. The march into Southwest Poland 
after Hindenburg's retreat was compelled by 
the fortress obstacles in North Germany. In 
the battle of Lodz, Germany took the initiative, 
and she has kept it. The unsuccessful assault 
on the Carpathians in March and April gave 
Austria also the initiative. After April, Russia 



ARMS AND MEN 215 

fought a defensive fight; the blows have been 
aimed where the enemy chose; and strategy 
has consisted in doing in the least costly way 
what the enemy required. 

When she had the initiative, Russia executed 
in her own way the strategy imposed by geo- 
graphical and defence conditions. In the hope 
of outweighing with superior numbers the en- 
emy's quality, she used her army as a single 

weapon of offence on a great front. She planned 

to crush or envelop. Of this kind were the at- 
tack on Austria in September, the march on 
Silesia and Posen in November, and the; spring 
assault on the Carpathians. For such strategy 
the Germans and Austrians had not men. They 
did not try to crush the Russians by one; opera- 
tion. The plan was to ehoose for destruction 
one Russian army; to concentrate superior 

power; to attack, with the Certainty of victory, 

before tin; attacked could be reinforced. This 
strategy was first tried at Tannenberg. After- 
victory a surprise attack was prepared on an- 
other front. The aim was to keep on weak- 
ening the Russians, to take their artillery, and 

undermine their morale until the time came for 
a general attack. The extension of the battle 
of Gorlice-Tarnow into an asault on the whole 
Russian front indicates that the enemy last 



216 COLOURS OF WAR 

spring believed the time had come. The ease 
in moving heavy guns was not the only factor. 
The strategy against Russia was costlier and 
took more time than the strategy of general 
attack tried in France. It accorded with the 
nature of the war as a self-insuring enterprise. 
By multiplying the number of operations, it 
distributed risk, and yielded the enemy the full 
fruits of their power, their good school of leader- 
ship, their good equipment, training, and morale. 
Russia's position, as result of the Austro- 
German victories, is beyond expression serious. 
She is pressed by enemies whose armies are 
larger, better equipped, and better led than 
at any stage of the campaign, whose morale 
has been raised by unexampled victories. She 
has lost the greater part of her army, much 
of her artillery and technical equipment, her 
fortresses, and a system of communications 
necessary for defence and offence. She has 
lost her most civilised provinces, with half a 
dozen manufacturing cities, and a great part of 
her coal supply. The mechanism for replacing 
waste of equipment is largely lost. In England 
these losses are represented to be trivial; they 
are even painted as latent and potential vic- 
tories; but the deceiving of the British people, 
which the Government and part of the Press 



ARMS AND MEN 217 

have pursued for a year, is no consolation for 
Russians, who fully realise the truth. While 
England has been learning that Russia has not 
been defeated, that her retreats are triumphs, 
and that her losses of fortresses, prisoners, and 
guns are intentional, the Russian nation is 
hearing from Duma and Press that the war 
has been a catastrophic failure; and that unless 
some saving factor — at present invisible — 
intervenes, the Russian cause and the whole 
Entente cause are lost. 

The defeats have brought open collision be- 
tween Government and people, and a state of 
revolution which has, so far, with one exception, 
been peaceful. The autocracy has collapsed, 
as it collapsed temporarily after the defeat in 
the Far East. Some obnoxious ministers have 
been dismissed; as successors have been ap- 
pointed men who, if not programmatic reformers, 
have good reputations; some freedom to criticise 
has been extorted; and progressive politicians 
are fighting for a responsible administration. 
The blame of defeat is put on the Government. 
The Duma reminds the Government that years 
ago it demanded in vain remedy of the army 
deficiencies which in the past year proved fatal; 
and it violently reproaches the bureaucracy for 
pursuing unchanged a system of government 



218 COLOURS OF WAR 

which led to a debacle ten years ago. In this 
quarrel between Government and society, all 
reason is not on one side. The Progressives, 
who before the war put their fingers on army 
defects and prophesied disaster as result of mis- 
government, forgot their warnings when war 
broke out. They not only shared official con- 
fidence, they went much further than bureau- 
crats went in prematurely proclaiming victory, 
in planning conquests, in the exuberances of 
faith which I witnessed when I first came out. 
If blame of the Court, Bureaucracy, and Minis- 
try of War is justified, the Liberal Intelligence, 
the Duma, and the Press must share the blame. 
This fact must be remembered in measuring 
the chance of restoring Russia's military strength 
during the war. 

At present parties are divided as to whether 
the war can be best carried on by the present 
bureaucratic system, with new men of good 
character and talents placed to some extent 
under representative control, or by a par- 
liamentary administration. A point agreed 
upon is that any Government must depend 
not on its own efforts but upon the co- 
operation of society. It is not clear that par- 
liamentary administration or closer Duma con- 
trol would increase military efficiency. The 



ARMS AND MEN 219 

circles which demand these reforms showed no 
more foresight about the war than the bureau- 
cracy showed. The revolution of ten years ago 
showed that these circles are no richer than the 
bureaucracy in men of character and ability. 
The demand for Parliamentarism, though hon- 
estly motived by desire to carry on the war 
more efficiently, is in reality a move in the class 
struggle for power — an attempt to complete 
the truncated revolution of 1905. 

In immediate defence measures the co-opera- 
tion between Government and society is having 
a good result. Energy is being shown in the 
manufacturing of equipment, and generally in 
what England calls the organisation of the 
nation. The output of equipment and muni- 
tions has been steadily increased. Difficulties 
have to be faced. They lie in part in the short- 
ness of machinery and of trained hands; and 
in greater part in the fact that the synthesis 
of classes implied in "co-operation of Govern- 
ment and society" has not been achieved. It 
is not possible to improvise confidence. The 
Liberal Press daily prints evidence that the old 
bureaucratic suspicion of voluntary effort, of 
social initiative survives; that it is hampering 
organisations and individuals whose only mo- 
tive is a patriotic will to serve their country. 



mo COLOURS OF WAR 

This moral hindrance, born of old distrust and 
oppression, operates against "the organisation 
of the nation" in the same way as strikes and 
disorders, the fruit of our Government's ante- 
war policy of anarchy, hinder the organisation 
of England. 

To avert disaster, Russia needs a respite. 
Even with a respite, her chance of recovery is 
small; without a respite, she has no chance. A 
respite would have been gained if the Niemen- 
Bug line had been held for the winter; after 
the line was lost it would have been gained 
if the enemy had assumed the defensive, and 
sent his superfluous forces to some other front. 
Possibly the invasion of Servia will bring Rus- 
sia the needed rest. But the Austrians and Ger- 
mans, who understand the political and moral 
principles of war as well as they understand 
the political principles, may not give Russia 
a respite, but may pursue the campaign to 
extremes. If so, unless a powerful diversion 
comes from some other front, the case of Russia 
and of the whole Entente is past repair. 

The only front possible is the Belgian and 
French. The notion that on this score Russia 
has cause of complaint against France and 
England is not correct. Officially, Russia has 
laid stress on the constant withdrawals of Ger- 



ARMS AND MEN 221 

man troops from the West for employment in 
the East; and in the Press are vague com- 
plaints that Russia is bearing most of the 
sacrifice. The implied complaint is not justi- 
fied. It was Russia's misfortune, and not her 
merit, that the Germans and Austrians after 
the battle of the Marne turned attention to 
her. Had they continued a successful offensive 
towards Paris, and held successfully against 
Russia a defensive line based on the Prussian 
fortresses, the Vistula, Cracow, and the Car- 
pathians, France would be complaining that it 
is she who bears all the sacrifice. It was the 
use Germany made of her ability to attack on 
either side, while the Entente could attack on 
neither, which brought the present misfortunes 
on Russia. It is not true that Russia, in order 
to save from destruction the French and British 
armies, diverted her strategy from its normal 
course, and sacrificed in East Prussia valuable 
armies. The armies destroyed at Tannenberg 
and at the Winter Battle of Masuria invaded 
Prussia because for Russia's proposed general 
offensive it was essential to clear the East- 
Prussian flank. Russian generals were not so 
naive as to plan the relief of France and Eng- 
land by consciously sending armies to destruc- 
tion. Russian strategy has been governed, first 



M% COLOURS OF WAR 

by the aim of crushing Germany and Austria, 
secondly by the aim of crushing Austria, and 
thirdly by the aim of defending home territory. 

If Russia has not got her respite, recupera- 
tion, with a new offensive, or even — at least 
until the impassable interior is reached — with 
a successful defensive, is out of the question. I 
base this judgment on the present relation of 
strength in the Eastern campaign. A Franco- 
British offensive so vigorous as radically to 
change the relation of strength in Russia's fa- 
vour by causing Germany to send large forces 
west would retrieve the situation. But the 
present Austro-German superiority margin in 
Russia is great, and the diversion offensive 
would have to be of overpowering character. 

It seems that the issue of the war depends 
on operations in the West. As France has al- 
ready put her last man in the field, the issue of 
the war depends on England. Nothing but 
efforts by England out of all proportion greater 
than she has made so far can save the Entente 
from crushing defeat. So far the British people 
has been misled about this. It has been led 
to rely not on its own efforts but upon allies 
who are too weak, and on factors which have 
no value on war, on "attrition," on "silver 
bullets," the heaping up of munitions, on rhet- 



ARMS AND MEN 223 

oric about steam-rollers, and on the hope of a 
material, intellectual, or moral collapse of our 
chief foe, who in these three respects is superior 
to ourselves. The hopes have been deceived. 
The present war will be won — if it has not al- 
ready been won — by the belligerent with the 
largest and best armies led by the best generals. 
The defeat of Russia can be retrieved only if 
England can put into the field forces com- 
parable with Germany's in numbers, quality, 
and leadership. If she cannot do so, she may 
as well make peace. A half-hearted war, lim- 
ited by considerations of national comfort, the 
whims of Labour, the foreign exchange rate, 
the balance of exports and imports, is of no 
more use to our allies than would have been 
neutrality. If England knew that she could 
only wage a limited liability war, sufficient to 
prolong the Entente's agony, but not to save 
it from defeat, she ought not to have gone to 
war at all. 



CHAPTER X 
FINIS POLONIAE 

FAR in the north, in midsummer, the sun 
rises so soon after it sets in the pines or 
in the rye that afterglow and the fore- 
glow of dawn unite. The red belt stretches too 
far, and lasts too long, for reality; it seems that 
behind the rye, Hyperboreans are burning the 
earth. Such a belt of fire, overhung by smoke, 
moved with the armies east, west, then again 
east. During position struggles the fire went 
out — no fuel was left. When the ruin was 
behind trees only a corona glowed; sometimes 
the trees were in flames. Chimney rows, all 
that stood of ruined villages, made bars across 
the glow. They looked like fences built to stay 
the flames. 

No one knows how much of Poland burned. 
The London Relief Fund said three-quarters; 
the Committee of Vevey beats it in precision; 
both invent enough to make a worse cause 
succeed. These exaggerations were published 
before the devastation of East Poland by the 

224 



FINIS POLONIAE 225 

retreating Russians last summer. Some small 
towns in West Central Poland were then in 
ruins; some had been half or three-quarters 
destroyed. Great areas had seen no war; the 
largest towns which had seen war were little 
harmed. Near Warsaw one house in thirty 
may have suffered. The worst destruction was 
on the Bsura, Rawka, and Nida; a gun-duel 
raged for four months; on a long, narrow belt 
little was left for relief fund reports to raze. 
The larger theatre round Lodz, where battles 
raged for three weeks, is not all ruin. Some 
small towns have disappeared; the total of de- 
struction is greater than on the Bsura, Rawka, 
and Nida. This follows a rule of the war: the 
relative destruction is conditioned by duration 
of battle; the absolute destruction by area 
and duration. Isolated farms suffer more than 
villages. Farms with enclosed spaces are bat- 
tered because they give cover to infantry; big 
buildings are targets for airmen's shells. Towns 
suffer from bombs; they suffer from artillery 
only when they are in the battle line. Towns 
in the battle line, held with resolution, are 
destroyed. When the Austro-German envel- 
opment movement compelled successively the 
evacuation of the Vistula and Bug lines, a new 
kind of destruction began, causing more loss 



226 COLOURS OF WAR 

and suffering than all ravages of the preceding 
year. The retreating Russians carried off the 
civil population, destroyed or removed food 
stores and portable property, and burned farms, 
villages, and townlets. Where the invaders 
compelled a rapid retreat, much property was 
spared. Of the larger towns, Brest-Litovsk, 
which has 50,000 inhabitants, was the only 
one wholly burned. When the retreating armies 
traversed territory populated by Russians, dev- 
astation ceased. The military value of devas- 
tation is doubtful; the invaders do not depend 
on the country for supplies or shelter; and the 
invaders seized the occasion to proclaim to the 
Poles that they only had to suffer in Russia's 
cause, whereas Russians were spared. 

Of damage west of the Bsura, Rawka, and 
Nida, I heard from refugees. During the battle 
of Lodz flames were everywhere. An airman 
who flew at night over Petrokow Provinces saw 
fires without end. Beneath were jagged patcjhes 
of yellow and red; farther, smaller fire patches 
with rounded outlines; on the horizon gleamed 
dots. He felt that he was flying upside down, 
looking at an exceptional sky with torn nebulas, 
comets, suns, and star points. In this battle, 
through accident or design, the burning grew 
worst towards the end. Sometimes shells burst; 



FINIS POLONIAE 227 

sometimes reprisals were taken. Sometimes 
there were street fights — these end with flames. 
Houses had to go because they gave the 
enemy cover, or stood in the line of fire. At 
Warsaw, at Ivangorod, at the fortresses of the 
Bug, Narev, and Niemen, villages were razed. 
The Austrians burned and blew up round 
Przemysl and Cracow. When a town, as 
Jaroslau, was hurriedly fortified, fire worked as 
hard as spades. Field fortifications began with 
razing. Sappers came to the commune head- 
man; notice was given; and surveys were 
made. Out of the cabins tumbled the peasants, 
and out of the yards were trundled carts; the 
carts were loaded with bedding, utensils, and 
clothes; the rest was left. I saw such an evic- 
tion. The wet thatches would not light; 
matches were laid to curtains inside. Dynamite 
cartridges, buried under a middle wall, blew 
up three cottages. The villagers were told to 
break down the brick chimneys and the still 
erect walls. Women wept, and children wept 
or clapped their hands. Trees were sawn 
through; big tree trunks were blown to bits. 
Some of the villagers fled to Warsaw; others 
found shelter in spared villages; some lost their 
heads, refusing to leave their homes, and they 
were dragged out by soldiers or friends. 



228 COLOURS OF WAR 

Many civilians suffered. The hospitals of 
Warsaw sheltered twenty persons hurt by shells 
during flight, half of them women and children. 
Wounded peasants came wrapped in rags and 
saved from freezing by sacks and straw mats. 
Women came in uniforms taken from the dead. 
In villages which had become centres of battle 
many peasants were burned. A sergeant, who 
left a North Poland village as the Germans en- 
tered, told me of this. The main street was in 
flames. There was a block of traffic — artillery, 
Red Cross waggons, refugees' carts. The flames 
set off explosives in a munition cart. A panic 
began. The Germans and the Russians believed 
that townsmen had attacked them. The leop- 
ard of a travelling menagerie got loose. Shel- 
ley's dream of fire and wild beasts in a sea 
storm was no worse. 

The country people suffered because they 
stayed when it was time to run, and ran when 
they ought to have stayed. The battles round 
Lodz and on the Bsura lasted for weeks. At 
the beginning the peasants in villages some 
way distant fled; seeing a stalemate, they re- 
turned; the stalemate, they reasoned, would 
last. Then the battle ended, the victor ad- 
vanced quickly, and the peasants were trapped. 
Many fled from rumours, but faced realities. 



FINIS POLONIAE 229 

The people of Schabja Wolja, near the Warsaw- 
Skierniewice railway, rushed west on hearing 
that the Germans were advancing from War- 
saw, having got there after a march along the 
Upper Vistula. Often the first danger-signal 
was a shell falling by night; there was a race 
down the burning street; villagers escaped, 
half naked, and left their goods behind. Many 
were killed by shells, burning beams, and rifle 
bullets. Some rushed into the enemy's lines, 
and got bullets from sentries. Sometimes the 
war looked harmless; confidence was felt; then 
the war changed its face, and brought panic 
and death. I saw a village in the Schidlowec 
district which had forty out of two hundred 
houses burnt. The Germans twice held it, and 
they did no harm. War was maligned. The 
Russians held it, and their peaceful ways con- 
firmed the belief that war was maligned. The 
soldiers spent money, and regret was felt when 
they left. The Germans intrenched to the 
west; the Russians were said to be east. A 
patrol advised the peasants to leave. Assured 
that war is a maligned thing, they stayed. 
They found themselves the centre of a big battle. 
The first shell blew off the roof of the communal 
administration ofhce. More shells fell. The 
peasants, shocked by the disclosure of War's 



230 COLOURS OF WAR 

reprobation, fled to a ravine; and lay there a 
day and a night while their houses blazed and 
collapsed. Into the ravine came a couple of 
shells. 

During an excursion along the Lodz road, 
made with citizens who wanted to hear the 
artillery roar, I saw refugees in movement. The 
refugees were peasants. They told me they had 
vowed to stay at home, and all broke the vow. 
When one fled, others fled; when only a few 
remained there was a panic, each seeking to 
outfly the rest. The last man found in a village 
is looked on as a spy. Six mud-covered carts 
carried bundles of clothes, boxes, pigs, and 
geese. The owners, except a grandmother 
wedged between pigs, walked. A battered town 
droschky brought a woman and three small 
children, kept from freezing by shields of 
bottle-packing. I heard of peasants starving 
to death, and of suicide from hunger; and I 
saw some living skeletons, children, who ran 
after Cossacks, crying "Bread, Bread!" Hun- 
ger was a temptation to spy for either side, or 
for both sides alternately, or at once. 

Most villages in South Poland had food for 
three or four weeks. There were big stores in 
the towns. The Germans requisitioned grain. 
Villages without bread managed to buy it at 



FINIS POLONIAE 231 

moderately high prices; this business was done 
on credit, and usurers made fortunes. I found 
villagers eating bread from mouldy grain. The 
grain had been stored on the ground floor of a 
country house. German officers had lodged 
overhead. The house caught fire, and the water 
used in extinguishing spoiled the grain. The 
country towns suffered from a fuel famine, 
caused by congestion of railways and roads. 
Manufactured goods were scarce. But except 
among refugees and in centres of burning, the 
need was not great. 

The refugees from Lodz, Petrokow, and West 
Poland were mostly Jews; small traders who 
curried favour with the invader by putting 
"Jewish Business" over their shops, as the 
townsmen Poles, to show they were not Russian 
officials, put "Polish Nationality," "Jewish 
Nationality," softened German hearts, but failed 
to deflect shells. The ruin of Jewry was great. 
At the end of November many Jews left Lodz. 
The Germans, who entered a week later, found 
the town without food, and they gave permis- 
sion to leave. Refugees made detours south, 
and got through a gap which separated the 
front of Lodz-Lowitsch from the front Czen- 
stochowo-Cracow. They travelled in country 
carts, and in decayed droschkies, which broke 



£32 COLOURS OF WAR 

down in the morasses. Praiseworthy stead- 
fastness in suffering combined with absorption 
in higher matters. I saw, in company with 
other women and with men, a Jewess of Tus- 
chin, whose child was killed by a shell. Like 
all the Jews, she spoke German. "Das kleine 
Ding spielte in dem Hof. ..." The men broke 
her off, explaining that a tool-shed was burned; 
the corrugated-iron roof cost forty roubles. A 
woman, hearing the mother's tale, cried with 
compassion; her husband reminded her that 
the roof cost forty roubles. I long heard his 
heart-breaking, "Forty roubles. . . ." and the 
women's heart-breaking whines. 

Towns that were spared were full of the 
homeless. Some of the homeless lived ten in 
a room; where rooms were full, the refugees 
camped. Some found lodgings in trenches. 
At Skrinno, a townlet west of Radom, I found 
thirty families of trench dwellers. There was 
a deep trench, roofed with planks, and divided 
into cubicles. The dwellers were happy; they 
had vodka — the first bottle I saw. In Blendow, 
a compassionate shell blew open the vodka 
shop, and gave fleeting oblivion. In the coun- 
try held by the enemy, the trench settlements 
were better. There were comfortable dug-outs 
for permanent habitation, with skylights, stoves 



FINIS POLONIAE 233 

from ruined houses, and ventilators. The 
greatest settlement was near Glovno, the centre 
of the Lodz-Lowitsch line, where the battle for 
Lodz was fought. Underground were tables 
and chairs, utensils, even looted pianos; a dug- 
out served as a general shop. The Germans 
sent gendarmes to establish order and to catch 
spies; the gendarmes found order, and were 
told that no spies would be harboured. The 
mayor and administration of the trench settle- 
ment were recognised. They lynched robbers, 
made improvements, drained the dug-outs, and 
provided common bakeries. A priest told me 
that health was not bad. The refugees refused 
to come to Lowitsch; they had lost the instinct 
of settled life; war, they reasoned, will return; 
if even soldiers have to seek safety in trenches, 
where should civilians be? 

In this there was reason. Most towns were 
as dangerous as battle-fields. In Glovno, forty 
men perished in a day. During the last hours 
of the great battle, the Germans shelled Lodz. 
An assistant of M. Gutchkoff, the Red Cross 
inspector and former Duma Speaker, who was 
the last man to leave before the enemy came, 
told me that in this half-German town, German 
shells with malice sought German targets. A 
shell killed the German housekeeper of the 



234 COLOURS OF WAR 

German club, the German theatre and the 
offices of the German Lodz Gazette were battered, 
and the first air-bomb wrecked a German 
electro-technical workshop. The centre of Lodz 
suffered little; the suburbs were burnt; Stry- 
kow, Glovno, and the southern part of Kon- 
stantinow were razed; Ljutomersk, after a 
three weeks' street fight, had bare walls. Rain 
saved Lowitsch, a German-Jewish town. Sparks 
blown across the Bsura set the suburbs ablaze. 
After Russian soldiers had failed to stay the 
flames, a saving downpour came. A Jew knelt 
in the mud, praying that his house might be 
spared. His house was spared, and a falling 
chimney broke his leg. 

Burning did less to finish Poland than efface- 
ment by spade and axe. Forests were turned 
into fields, and fields into wastes. The roads 
and railways became weapons of war; they were 
made or unmade as they passed from hand to 
hand. During the German advance, impressed 
workers made roads. Muddy tracks from West 
Prussia to Warsaw were paved with pine-sap- 
lings, laid side by side. Osiers, pinned at the 
ends with pegged battens, made surfaces for 
causeways through the morasses. The railway 
gauge was changed from 1.523 m. to the Ger- 
man 1.435. A railway was built from Slupzy 



FINIS POLONIAE 235 

on the frontier to Lowitsch, and trains, we 
heard, ran from Mons to Lodz. The Poles 
blessed the enemy; travelled in clean trains; 
and along flat surfaces unknown before drove 
to market their surprised cows. The Germans 
retreated; roads, causeways, railways vanished, 
and the Sarmatian waste came back. 

This was Hindenburg's plan. The roads were 
chess-boarded — dug up or blown up alternately 
on different sides — and left with holes of snow- 
water, some ironically placarded "Mixed Bath- 
ing. " The railway lines were torn up, and the 
rails removed; the stations were destroyed; 
the water-towers were razed, and the points 
and signal apparatus smashed. The telegraph 
wires were chopped up, the poles were sawn 
through, and the isolators broken. Blood was 
spilt to insure destruction. The Russians near 
Radom drove off a small rearguard which had 
caused surprise by holding a weak position. 
Sappers with Polish civilians were found be- 
hind the battle-line, destroying a railway station. 
Already, the wooden buildings were burnt, the 
brick foundations broken, metal was smashed, 
even the stovepipe was rent. Being without 
explosives, the sappers had diverted the rails 
toward a water-tower, and sent along them a 
locomotive which razed the tower and tumbled 



236 COLOURS OF WAR 

into a stream. A village boy, seated on a motor- 
waggon, clipped coils of spare telegraph wire. 
Officers said there was a machine on an eight- 
wheel bogey which swallowed torn-up rails, 
and discharged them as corkscrews. Roads 
and railways which the invaders could use in 
the reinvasion, already planned, were spared. 
From the bridges at Brest, Gostynin, and 
Ljubravtes the girders were removed, but the 
pillars were left, so that repairs might be made 
in a few hours. By this route, the outflanking 
army of Mackensen was to march. In South 
and Central Poland, where our centre was to 
flounder helplessly while its right was being 
crushed, destruction was thorough. 

A quarter of the fields round Warsaw cannot 
be tilled. They are swallowed by roads, or rent 
by trenches, sometimes by three trenches, one 
behind the other, with entanglements which 
the peasants, expecting the war will come back, 
fear to remove. The forests have been burned 
or cut down. As the roads grew, the woods 
dwindled. Pines, having straight trunks, were 
most needed. The osiers were shorn from wil- 
lows. At Opatow I saw an avenue of living 
trees without a twig. On the main road is an 
avenue of old oaks, all sawn five-sixths through, 
felled, and turned into the fields in neat rows. 



FINIS POLONIAE 237 

The trees hampered artillerists. On the west 
front of Ivangorod, the Austrians loopholed 
the oaks, and put sharpshooters behind. The 
wood was shelled to bits. The use of the tree- 
tops as crows' nests of lookout men caused de- 
struction. Everywhere behind the Nida where 
rights took place, copses were blasted; trees 
were pierced by shells that did not explode, or 
were shorn, uprooted, or split. Forests on the 
Bsura which hindered fighting were burned. 
Before the battle of Tannenberg, the Germans 
soaked a wood with petroleum: in the climax 
of the victory they set the trees aflame; and 
into the flames drove the flying enemy. There 
was fun in this for a race of forestry experts. 
They saw the point; and in the battered streets 
of Kalisch planted rows of limes. 

Lodz changed hands five times. Soon after 
war began, the Germans came. A stream of 
refugees from Kalisch flowed before them. The 
Russians returned, and stayed for a fortnight. 
On their first advance to Warsaw, the Germans 
came back, staying till the end of October. 
Manufacturing had ceased; there was no fuel; 
in the streets hungry workmen swooned. The 
Commandant, General v. Libert, and the Com- 
mander of the Citizens' Militia, M. Grohmann, 
introduced order. After the retreat from War- 



238 COLOURS OF WAR 

saw, the Russians retook possession. On Decem- 
ber the sixth, after their success in the three 
weeks' battle, the Germans came again. M. 
Grohmann was still chief of the Militia. Colonel 
v. Zurich was the new Commandant. The 
German Polish Legion did garrison duty; when 
the invaders marched on the Miazza, no soldiers 
were left. Again there were no lights, no fuel, 
little food. The Commandant ordered that a 
light be shown in every window. Grohmann 
protested. There were no candles and no 
petroleum. "Windows must be lighted," re- 
peated the Commandant. Grohmann got a 
respite. He asked the Commandant to dinner. 
The guest was received in a dark dining-room. 
In came the butler with a stump of candle, 
guarded as jealously as the knight in Selma 
Lagerlofs tale guarded the flame from the 
Sepulchre. When soup was eaten, Grohmann 
blew the candle out. "What do you mean?" 
asked the German. "To spare the candle. 
We can talk in darkness. To eat we need light." 
The fish was brought. The chief of the Militia 
lighted the candle. When the course was over, 
the candle was again extinguished; and the talk 
went on in darkness. The candle was lighted 
for the other courses, and was put out as they 
ended. When coffee appeared, the dwindling 



FINIS POLONIAE 239 

stump was lighted. It sputtered, flared up 
ironically, and went out. The window-lighting 
decree was revoked. 

Like the Russians in Galicia, the Germans 
and Austrians in Poland behaved as if they 
had come to stay. South Poland, held by Aus- 
tria, continued under military rule and jurisdic- 
tion, with district commandants at Petrokow 
and Kielce. The Germans established a civil 
administration, and, after capturing the Bug 
defence line, they formed of all Poland in their 
occupation a "General Government for War- 
saw," under General v. Beseler. They kept 
order, relieved hunger, and shot spies in scores. 
Trial by jury was introduced; Lodz was given 
a municipal council; and the Jews, as the race 
which hated Russia most, were favoured. The 
factory magnates expelled Russian from the 
schools, and substituted Polish. German news- 
papers opened offices; and German traders 
opened shops. When fuel and raw material 
were found, many factories started; factories 
which produced things needed for the Army 
started first. A day after Lodz fell, shell-cases 
were being cast. This was the German way. 
At Libau factories were set to making muni- 
tions at once. There were no speeches to work- 
men; and no praise of society ladies for filling 



240 COLOURS OF WAR 

shells in the half-hour before tea. In Lodz, 
German signs were put up beside Polish. The 
market square of Lowitsch became Kaiser- Wil- 
helm-Platz — the thousandth such Platz in Ger- 
man lands. There was a Hindenburg-Strasse, 
also a Mackensen-Strasse. In the Kaiser-Wil- 
helm-Platz, to the memory of the German and 
Russian dead, rose a square tower of unhewn 
stones with a peaked roof, massive and ugly 
as the new German monuments are, in discord 
with the plain, dignified houses. Photographs of 
it have been in German papers; I remember 
the town since Revolution days. In Chorzele 
was set up a colossal bust, worked by a Land- 
wehr cavalryman, of Hindenburg, the face 
turned towards Warsaw. On the pedestal are 
the names Tannenberg and Masuria. 

The economic measures resemble those re- 
ported to have been taken in Flanders and 
France. Copper and lead were requisitioned. 
The raw metals were taken; owners of manu- 
factured copper articles had to register. It 
was forbidden to send copper and lead out of 
the towns. Copper coins might be circulated 
in the towns, but not sent outside. Goods were 
paid for with requisition notes. Sometimes the 
owners got blue tickets with an eagle stamp: 
Die russische Regierung wird ersucht . . . : "The 



FINIS POLONIAE 241 

Russian Government is requested to pay. ..." 
A Jewish woman told me, with tears, that "the 
Prussian soldiers carried everything off." She 
remembered that they paid for a jam-boiling 
pot as solid brass, "though it was brass only on 
the surface," and she smiled through her tears. 
On the Vistula the Germans established a 
steamer service; they regulated the channel, 
and in places dammed the banks. They com- 
pelled farmers to till. Captured Russian officials 
had to make lists of farms and farmers, giving 
the average yield, the labour needed, the source 
of the labour supply. Farmers who refused to 
work were forcibly sent back; if they were out 
of reach, soldiers worked the farms; the yield, 
after payment of expenses and a fine of twenty 
per cent., was banked. Professors of farming 
"in civil clothing and helmets" came, also 
practical farmers and foresters. The measures 
were harsh, but they made for industry. For 
loungers there was no more grace in Lodz than 
in Posen. Despotism aggravated by order dis- 
pleased a nation used to despotism tempered by 
neglect; and many Poles went south to the 
easier sphere of Austria, where at least they 
need not work. 



CHAPTER XI 
TRANSPORT 

DURING the advance of September, 1914, 
South Central Poland on the left Vis- 
tula bank was held by Germans. These 
were troops of Hindenburg, sent to relieve Aus- 
tria by threatening the right of IvanofFs armies 
in Galicia. When the Russian army, concen- 
trated behind the river, threatened to cross in 
the north and in the south, the Germans went 
north to check the threat to Hindenburg's left. 
They were replaced by Austrians, who were to 
stop a Russian crossing in the south. The Aus- 
trians failed, and retreated; the Russians came 
after them, and a battle was fought in the 
Lysa Gora hills. On November the third, the 
Russians occupied Kielce; and they marched 
from there to Miechow, near Cracow. 

In the advance which followed the German 
victory of Lodz, South Poland fell to Austrians 
under Woyrsch. The Austrians stormed Petro- 
kow on the seventeenth of December; the 
Russians retreated. An Austrian column, com- 

242 



TRANSPORT 243 

ing from the direction of Cracow, marched 
to the Nida. This is a tributary which flows 
in a southeasterly course from a point near 
Kielce to the Vistula at Nowi-Kortschin. It 
continued the Rawka-Bsura river line, the de- 
fence of Central Poland. The Pilitsa cut the 
line; to the north were Germans, with a bridge- 
head at Inowlods, to the south Austrians. 
Woyrsch tried to force the Nida, as Hinden- 
burg tried to force the Bsura and the Rawka. 
He found the left (the east) bank strongly held, 
and he sat down to position warfare. The Rus- 
sians on the Nida were first shaken by the de- 
feat of Tarnow-Gorlice. 

Fighting on the Nida was with shells and 
rifles. There were some bayonet collisions. In 
January the Russians tried to cross the river. 
The Austrians counter-attacked. Next month, 
there were fights south of the Ivangorod rail- 
way. Engineers and airmen worked hard. 
The Russians blew up an Austrian bridge at 
Schernicki. At Bochinez fighting was inde- 
cisive. There was a struggle for the ford at 
Wisliza. Ice blown up by the Russians swept 
the enemy down. In April the northern half 
of the Russian lines was shelled heavily. The 
Austrians, somewhere near Konsk, bombed a 
chateau of the universal Counts Tarnowski, 



244 COLOURS OF WAR 

and fed the flames with proclamations promising 
Poland prosperity. The chateau was supposed 
to shelter a Corps Staff. Cracow Austrophiles 
and spies infested Kielce and the Lysa Gora. 
In the virgin forest around Sandomierz bandits 
swarmed; on the day I passed through the 
town they were put to flight by the guards of 
an episcopal clerk. 

The central etappe service of the Nida armies 
went by the road from Radom to Kielce. Par- 
allel runs a railway joining Ivangorod with the 
industrial district of Silesia. The traffic was an 
epitome of Russia. Into Radom ran trucks 
and vans from the Siberian fine, the Trans- 
caspian line, the Central Asia and Eastern 
Manchuria lines; I saw vans marked "F. J." 
from Finland: and later heard Finns complain 
of a van famine. The van famine was uni- 
versal — it impeded the food supply; in Petro- 
grad trails of housekeepers waited at butchers' 
shops, and failed to get meat. Sanitary trains 
with wounded men from all places between the 
Vistula and the Pilitsa passed Radom. Many 
trains were of fourth-class Siberian emigrant 
cars, painted grey-white and marked with Red 
Crosses. Their four window-panes distinguished 
them from other carriages. On the platforms 
stood surgeons with red spots on their overalls, 



TRANSPORT 245 

and young women nurses, serious, ugly, and 
irritable as people are who think only of work. 
Through the unclean windows I saw, crossed 
by the bars, bandaged and often bloody heads; 
sometimes men in yellow-white shirts raised 
themselves on their elbows to grin. 

I started for Kielce in the wheeled oven known 
as teplushka, the warming-place. It is a heatable 
railway carriage with rough seats. The fourth- 
class carriages, marked "eight horses or forty 
men," were fitted with seats after mobilisation; 
seats, with straw for bedding, are all that differ- 
entiates them from the eight-horses state. The 
warming-place is kept heated, and the door is 
kept shut. When the door is opened at a station, 
soldiers cry, "The draught!" and rush to shut 
it. Men who have spent months in windy 
trenches seize the first chance to wrap them- 
selves up. This is a Russian way, common to 
all classes; as a physical and psychical idiosyn- 
crasy, it is caricatured in Tchekhoff's Man in 
the Case. Cossacks whom I told that it was 
spring said, "That is why we keep out the cold. 
It is spring in the Kuban, cattle and flowers 
are in the open air; here it is only a Polish 
spring." If the door were kept closed, and the 
stove kept heated, it would seem like spring 
in the Kuban. 



246 COLOURS OF WAR 

The soldiers would not talk of war. The 
most talkative had seen battles; but all they 
said was, "I was on the position . . . when 
you get to the position . . . the position was 
taken. ..." They used the Russianised word, 
positsiya. The peace talk was absorbing. It 
began about a lady, a landowner's wife, Kapi- 
tolina Platonovna; no one, a soldier said, could 
be called Kapitolina; but in Kherson a man 
named Plato is always a gentleman. There 
was a Bishop Plato in the first Duma. The 
soldiers argued about the right way of saluting 
by cavalrymen who ride with both hands. 
They said that soldier chauffeurs when driving 
do not salute at all. At Jastrshomb, not far 
from Radom, the soldier who knew Plato was 
a Bishop, washed his shirt piecemeal in a small 
can: when the train stopped, he waved the 
shirt on the platform; later he clambered on 
to the carriage roof, and spread the shirt. The 
soldiers crowded on the platform and laughed, 
saying, "Hang it on the sun!" The washer- 
man said, "The nearer the sun, the sooner it 
will dry. Teach your godfather to sneeze!" 

In six hours we covered forty versts. The 
train went not to Kielce, its destination, but 
to Suchednew, near the junction for Lodz. 
For transport farther, I had to send to a village 



TRANSPORT 247 

east of the station. The carriage came at half- 
past three in the morning, and took four hours 
to cover the twenty miles to Kielce. There 
were some houses in ruin. I walked in the dawn 
to a hamlet, near the railway line, which had 
not one brick left in place; there were brick 
heaps with charred balks, broken chairs, bat- 
tered cheap pictures, rags, papers. Close by 
is the grave of two civilians killed by a shell. 
When it grew light, there was firing from heavy 
guns. One shot came every five minutes. 
Weaker sounds came from the south. The 
Austrians were bombarding our lines on the 
provincial frontier of Radom and Kielce. Near 
Kielce, I forgot Poland's misery. Misery is 
flat. On the left were slopes and bare hillocks, 
and behind rose the real hills of Lysa Gora. 
At Kielce I was to meet an officer who had 
promised that I should see the Austrians, as I 
had seen them in Galicia, but should see nothing 
more, as the front was quiet. I met him coming 
into the town by the road from the south; after 
him a trail of wounded. The lightly wounded 
walked; eight were packed like sandwiches in 
a Red Cross automobile. The streets showed 
the usual painful sight — men with bandaged 
hands, and childish looks of surprise and in- 
jured innocence. Fighting, I learned, was 



248 COLOURS OF WAR 

going on; a Red Cross official had been twice 
to the Nida marshes, and was going back. 
The marshes in thaw were a better defence 
than the thread of Nida water south of the 
railway. Now they were frozen. There had 
been heavy shelling; infantry fighting had be- 
gun, but there was nothing, I heard, to see; 
one side — no one knew which — was trying 
to cross and take the other's trenches. Per- 
haps both were trying. We drove in a motor- 
car south, and crossed the Black Nida. Here 
there were old trenches, and a cottage in ruins; 
some way north are the universal graves. We 
met a soldier with a wreath of pine-needles in 
paper ribbons; he wore the wreath round his 
neck like a ruff. "What's the necktie for?" 
"To bury the men." "What men? " The lines 
were miles away. Someone, we learned, had 
dug into graves to hunt for valuables. The 
Poles were angry; they came in crowds to the 
etappe station to say no Pole was guilty. The 
battlefield politicians must have felt sore; the 
dead officers' watches had gone to their heirs, 
and the soldiers never had anything worth steal- 
ing except life. 

At the Black Nida, the roar of big guns was 
loud. It ceased; there were other sounds, lower 
and sharper; and it began again. Wounded 



TRANSPORT 249 

were coming, all along the road; some came afoot 
from the Rembow marshes miles away. They 
said that the Austrians had attacked, that the 
Russians had attacked, that they did not know 
which had attacked. A staff motor-car passed 
at great speed. Cossacks brought a few pris- 
oners, one with bloody bandages. Like most 
Austrians I have seen, they were slight, rosy, 
and neat, a contrast to our dust bundles with 
dust faces. They answered our greeting with 
"Gru'ass Gott /" a South-German pronuncia- 
tion; they said No when I asked if they were 
Tyroleans — I think they came from Salzburg 
or Upper Austria. Their story was that the 
Russians attacked. We overtook an ammuni- 
tion column. The driver said that there was a 
vast battle going on, "hundreds were killed, 
perhaps millions." The last ammunition col- 
umn had sought shelter behind a wood; Aus- 
trian airmen flew over it, dropping bombs which 
exploded in mid-air, and made white clouds. 
These were signals; the enemy acted on them 
by shelling the wood from high-angle guns. 
Next a soldier bearer with flesh torn from his 
leg, came on a cart. A peasant woman drove. 
He said he had been struck three days before; 
the Austrians were now attacking. The road 
after this was blocked with transport, ammuni- 



250 COLOURS OF WAR 

tion carts, ambulances, and a battery of field 
guns. The guns had not forgotten their kettles 
and pots. Our car could not pass. After tack- 
ing up a field in the way of Commodore Trun- 
nion, and finding that ditches stopped naviga- 
tion, we returned to the road, left the car with 
the chauffeur, and made for the next village. 
Here was an etappe hospital full of wounded 
men; the artillery roar was loud, and from the 
roof we saw columns of smoke. We found one 
officer's horse, and, after long delay, a pony 
with a Cossack saddle, and made six miles along 
the road, partly in fields, and all the way through 
or past transport, ammunition cars, and guns. 
An hour later, I was nearer the Austrians than 
I had been anywhere except on the Dunajec; 
but I saw no Austrians except prisoners, and 
these only in fours and fives. Fighting was 
going on in an unknown place, in an inexplicable 
way. 

Fights are seen only by fighters, and these 
see little. Red Cross men and newspaper corre- 
spondents see battle material, but little of the 
use. Specks in the sky are the chief things seen 
of the enemy's attempts to destroy. These are 
shrapnel shells; the bursting of brisant shells is 
best watched from a roof; there are eruptions of 
smoke and mud, with flame plainly visible in 



TRANSPORT 251 

weak light. In position fighting shrapnel explo- 
sions are easier to see than shell explosions. 
Shells are dropped in the advanced trenches 
and shrapnel is used against artillery, infantry 
in movement, ammunition columns, and other 
things in the rear. This is not always so, but it 
is the rule. You see guns slowly moving with 
ammunition waggons, reserves, cavalry which 
seems to be idling, a field-hospital, wounded men 
on foot, in carts, and prisoners. You also see 
many officers, single or in small groups; soldiers, 
single or in groups; and single horsemen, all 
moving or watching; and unless you are ex- 
pert in war you do not know what they are 
about. 

Prominent is the service of the wounded. 
The first work is out of sight. Civilian and 
soldier bearers with stretchers are behind the 
fighting line; they have been there since the 
battle began. A battalion has twenty bearers 
with five stretchers. The bearers carry for first 
aid the badly wounded; the lightly wounded 
walk. First aid is given at a bandaging point, 
which is served by Red Cross cars. The band- 
aging point may be in the open air, it may be a 
tent. From there the wounded are taken to 
the field-hospital, usually in a house, where first 
operations are done; afterwards they go to a 



252 COLOURS OF WAR 

permanent war hospital. If you get to a field- 
hospital you are as near as you can safely be. 

In position warfare, where the battle consists 
of shell fire and rifle fire, with slow infantry 
progress, you can safely get nearer. You can 
get through saps to field artillery positions, and 
easily to the positions of big guns and howitzers 
in the rear. If there is an eminence you can 
see through good glasses the trenches, and dots 
of your own, and even of the enemy's infantry. 
Reserve troops in movement behind the line 
are seen. Poland is flat, and the few eminences 
are dangerous; woods are shelled because they 
give cover to reserves, sharpshooters, and muni- 
tions. 

Most things appear as details in confusion. 
Of the nature and aim of the whole you have no 
notion; line officers cannot tell you, only when 
you get week-old newspapers is everything easy 
and plain. There is confusion of men, guns, and 
waggons at the rear, and of smoke discs and mud 
spouts in front; you are sharp if you can tell 
where are friends and where are foes, and which 
side has filled the air with the discs of smoke. 
The unbroken roar and rattle, the rattle's strange 
weakening on one side and nervous waxing on 
the other, and the echo effects and reverbera- 
tions near big buildings and forests confound 



TRANSPORT 253 

the confusion. If the battle is big, you feel 
dazed, and you soon get tired. 

The fighting this day was in the Rembow 
marshes. There was a patch of flat country, 
with thin snow and bare patches. Far behind 
the fighting line were big shell-craters, which 
must have been old, for they were half full of 
snow. Some craters were outside the cottage, 
from the roof of which my companion, three 
relieved line officers, and I watched. The shells 
which made these craters blew the cottage win- 
dows in. The frozen marshes and the frozen 
Nida were out of sight, or they were blent with 
the plain. Fighting went on to the south. The 
artillery roar relaxed, but rattle of musketry 
was continuous. Loud reports came, I was told 
from Russian 21 cm. mortars, used to break up 
trenches. Officers whom I asked about the 
mortars pointed to a plain with shrubs: nothing 
was to be seen, except at one point where an 
abrupt hillock was covered with something dark, 
perhaps sapling-pines. 

A few Austrian shells could be seen bursting, 
not enough to explain the roar. The first explo- 
sions were little clouds of earth, which rose all at 
once out of the white ground, and subsided, 
leaving patches of black. I saw no flame. Later, 
the Austrians sent shells at a square park of 



254 COLOURS OF WAR 

ammunition waggons and carts outside a farm. 
One blew a gap in the side of this dark mass. 
The rest went over it, and burst steadily on the 
same spot, snowless from traffic. A few of the 
shells sent up regular spouts of earth; most 
raised ragged masses which looked like very big 
waves hurled over rocks, dark as you see such 
waves when you are nearly underneath. There 
was white foam, not on top. This was smoke. 
The smoke delays. It seems as if the black 
wave came out of the spray, and the wave tum- 
bles back on the spray, and crushes it into the 
ground. While this bombardment went on, 
an enemy aeroplane flew. Officers told me it 
was flying along our lines, but they knew only 
vaguely where the lines were. The map showed 
the Nida to turn at right angles; if the line 
was the Nida, and both sides held it as a trench, 
it was impossible to know whether to look east 
or south. 

Behind the invisible lines, movement went 
on. Wounded came back, all bandaged, some in 
carts. Then came an empty ammunition waggon 
drawn by two horses. A shell had wrecked it. 
Spokes were missing, the stump of a shaft stuck 
from the hooked footboard, the rail on top 
was broken, and paint was off the side. Going 
south, obliquely to the probable line of fighting, 



TRANSPORT 255 

there was a battery of field guns. I believe it 
was the battery seen on the road. Guns not 
in action, turned backwards with lowered muz- 
zles, awaken thoughts of depression and retreat; 
these seemed domesticated and tame. I asked 
an officer where they were making for. "The 
Austrians," he said, "are crossing higher up. 
Lower down." He had been on the Bsura and 
Rawka which flow north; the Nida, which then 
made up the rest of the tactical frontier, flows 
south. In a fight near Warsaw this officer had 
lost a finger. He told me that he tied the finger 
stump, fought all day, and was bandaged by a 
doctor at night. 

Our field guns began to bombard the Austrian 
positions beyond the Nida. The roar of the guns 
was loud; no effects were seen — the distance 
was too great. I heard that shell was used. The 
Austrians continued to shell the park of waggons, 
which dispersed, and to pour shrapnel on coun- 
try to the north. The target at first was out of 
sight; the shrapnel shells seemed to be bursting 
over a snowless dark space; later something 
came into sight, reserve infantry winding to- 
wards the trenches or ammunition columns. A 
few shrapnel shells went over a house not far off, 
making high whistles which were well heard 
through the gun roar and musketry rattle. 



256 COLOURS OF WAR 

There were discs — really globes — of white 
smoke which melted quickly; underneath some, 
for an instant, showed specks of black. Some- 
times the shrapnel shells burst at the same mo- 
ment, sometimes after regular intervals; before 
one disc melted another appeared; and at one 
moment a big arc of sky was strewn with discs 
which winked and went out. To the right some- 
thing burning sent up a column of smoke, mixed 
with unstable and dull fire; the smoke broke 
up and spread in wisps, engulfing the shrapnel 
globes. Later, there were other sky signs which 
I did not understand: plumes of smoke, blue 
against the lighter sky, with torn tops and 
stalks dwindling to points. I counted them, one, 
two, three, and questioned an officer. Officers 
seldom know much of battle phenomena; they 
take no interest. This officer said, "You see 
all sorts of things in war." 

During the exchange of shells and bullets, 
wounded went past; a few in Red Cross waggons, 
more in peasant carts, and most of all on foot. 
I went to meet them. I asked the wounded 
whether many were killed: they said, "Nobody; 
lots of us have bits chipped out." This was a 
soldier's observation of a few yards of trench. 
One man's boot, as he passed the cottage, leaked 
blood in the snow. He had been bandaged by a 



TRANSPORT 257 

bearer, and sent straight to the field-hospital, 
the first-aid point being overworked. A cav- 
alryman, somebody's orderly, was brought on a 
cart. He had fallen partly under his horse, and 
pressure stayed the bleeding from a wounded 
arm. On the next carts were men seated, un- 
able to walk, but merry; they waved their hands. 
The last cart brought a dead man. His body 
was put aslant, feet down, in a shell crater and 
covered in. A clod knocked the handkerchief 
from his face. Most dead men are calm, this 
man's face was quizzical and surprised, as if he 
had been stopped in a joke. 

The fight ended in rain. There was less and 
less noise; then there was a lull; next a single 
shrapnel disc, rifle shots, and silence. I heard 
that the Austrians had made some attacks and 
been repulsed, and that we counter-attacked. 
Forty prisoners were taken in the first hour, 
others were taken later. As we rode back, women 
who had been watching the fight told us that 
this was the bloodiest fight of the war. There 
were hundreds of wounded. To the question, 
how many hundreds, one said, "We saw eight 
carts with wounded all at once"; the other said, 
"We saw ten." These carts I found further on 
in a crush of empty ammunition waggons, peas- 
ants' carts 9 and Cossacks in the saddle. We 



258 COLOURS OF WAR 

rode across the fields. At the hospital the crush 
was worse; and an hour passed before our 
car could start. Everything was mixed up, the 
drivers made surprising manoeuvres, sometimes 
backing yards to gain feet, sometimes dashing 
through openings that quickly shrank. In the 
confusion reigned order; nobody fussed; carts 
tumbled with dignity into the big roadside 
drain; and the transport oaths — the tchort 
vozmi I diavol ! and anathema I — were so placid 
that strangers ignorant of Russian — and Greek 
— would think the men were at prayer. 

The etappe service bewilders laymen; also 
soldiers. I asked many, and a few knew more 
than I. You see crowded roads, carts crawling 
with food, munition carts with far too many 
horses, loads of bridge material, meaningless 
loads of thin iron rims, and all the wheeled traf- 
fic of the Red Cross. The wheels turn in their 
own way, leisurely, without regard to one an- 
other, in social equality: the motor-car gets 
only the precedence it exacts by speed and 
strength — the dirtiest peasant cart pays it no 
respect. Most of the carts go laden south and 
go empty north, but the Red Cross carts go 
empty south and return full north. That is 
the etappe service: a circulation of food and 
bullets which come back in the bodies of men. 



TRANSPORT 259 

The organisation is hidden. On the trees are 
rough-cut signboards, scrawled in tar "Etappe 
Road"; and in town is the etappe commandant, 
a tired officer who holds a telephone receiver 
while his elbows disturb piles of blotted forms. 
The etappe organisation is not so simple as that. 
It has military structure; diagrams with col- 
oured, ramifying lines; inspectors, and power to 
impress labour, govern, and punish. The auto- 
mobiles, horsemen, carts, that look so disorderly, 
converge and diverge where they ought to; col- 
umns without confusion cross one another. The 
service controls railways, rivers, canals, auto- 
mobile parks, storehouses, butcheries, bakeries. 
It feeds the army and it feeds itself. It is linked 
with the sources of production. If the sources 
are adequate, a fit etappe service insures the 
army's supply. So much theory I got from 
officers. I saw later the practice of the etappe. 

Between Kielce and Radom I travelled in an 
empty train. From Radom the railway to War- 
saw goes through Ivangorod, across the Vistula, 
and along the right bank. It is a hundred miles. 
By rail it would take a day, maybe two days — 
the trains stop for hours at a time, and the 
average speed is walking speed. I arranged to 
go by automobile with an officer friend from 
Bjalobrshegi on the Pilitsa to Warsaw. For the 



260 COLOURS OF WAR 

twenty miles to Bjalobrshegi I had to find a 
carriage. The whole journey would take five 
hours. At a stream which lies a third of the 
way, I was tempted to drive aside to see Aus- 
trian trenches. There was nothing in them, 
except a picture of the Emperor Francis Josef, 
and mud-trodden picture supplements of Berlin 
newspapers. The expedition took two hours; 
before I reached Bjalobrshegi the motor car had 
left. To the north is the river which has washed 
down more blood than all other rivers together. 
It washes nothing else; the town is Poland's 
dirtiest; its Jews have the greasiest caftans, and 
its children the most tattered breeches. There 
were no carriages, no horses, and an etappe 
official whom I met in the hotel offered to take 
me to Warsaw if I waited three days. 

When I said I should walk, the official asked 
about my bag. The bag forced me to a journey 
which proved unclean and novel. To the hotel 
came a big, very dirty man, with top boots and 
a whip. He laid down a blue paper, and said 
he was a viestovoi, a messenger. The Russian 
word is akin to "Avesta"; the viestovoi is akin 
to horses, whips, blue forms, and grubby en- 
velopes. He takes papers with etappe columns. 
As a rule he is a deliberate, responsible man. 
When I asked the messenger if he could get me 



TRANSPORT 261 

a carriage, he said, "Yes, I shall myself take 
you to Warsaw; M. Lebedieff went, and he 
was pleased." I thought I should get a saddle 
horse. We went to a yard where there was a 
park of loaded carts. Many drivers lounged. 
The bag was put on a cart, on top of sacks. 
On the sacks, beside the bag, I waited for an 
hour, watching the messenger roll tobacco in 
newspaper wisps and hearing, "We shall start 
at once." He disappeared, returned after half 
an hour, said, "We shall start at once," and 
started. Starting meant watching the drivers, 
who walked one horse after the other into the 
cobbled street, mixed the carts up, and said 
calmly Anathema! My cart was last. Before 
we left Bjalobrshegi it was lost in an endless 
train. 

The train of carts is the greatest part of 
traffic on the etappe. Carts come from every- 
where. In Europe, with railways, roads, and 
many automobiles, transport is easy. A big 
motor car supplies a hundred times more men 
than a peasant cart — it carries ten times the 
load and makes ten times as many journeys. 
Here there are no railways worth mentioning, 
and few motor cars; the roads are tracks, and 
the peasant carts, small and rickety, have 
horses to match. My transport cart differed 



262 COLOURS OF WAR 

from a peasant cart in peace time by a "C. 409" 
in red paint. Other carts had "C," their class 
in the etappe scheme, and numbers. The carts 
had no springs. The shafts were unpainted 
pine-sticks, dust grey as all the woodwork is; 
the harness was a rope. A ridge of wood in 
front was the box. When ruts were crossed, 
the sacks wobbled, and the passenger held on 
by the driver's ridge of wood. The messenger, 
standing high in his stirrups, rode alongside: 
he reproved the driver, kept him awake, and 
swore imperturbably. 

The messenger said that the transport train 
was small. "How many carts?" "Maybe a 
thousand." I saw neither beginning nor end. 
In front was a similar two-wheeled cart with a 
peasant driver in short sheepskin coat and cap 
of lambskin. Farther on, an artillery forge 
cart rumbled. It was an intruder, and the 
driver behind jeered at it. Before it were carts 
without end, and behind me was the same end- 
less chain. Beside went a second chain of carts 
with another letter in red. At Grojec, this 
branched off, and we were joined by two more 
trains, one short. Near Grojec the road rises. 
I stood on the sacks, swaying as they wobbled, 
and searched through field-glasses for a patch 
of free road. There were only carts. 



TRANSPORT 263 

The drivers slept. When we came to a nar- 
row bridge, or met a motor car, the messenger 
thrust his whip down my driver's neck and 
woke him. At small villages the messenger 
took out a thick watch, and made notes on a 
blue form. He discovered an etappe official, 
who sent a very young man and a grizzled man 
into the road. These men checked the carts. 
Some carts were missing. The thin Polish horses 
were guilty. Every half hour the train met a 
staff motor car. The horses kicked and reared. 
The staff officers, the chauffeurs, the drivers 
bawled, "Cover his eyes!" the horses lashed 
out, dashed into the ditch, and smashed the 
shafts. Nobody worried. If the wrecked cart 
was near the head of the team, it arrived with 
the tail — the team took longer to pass the 
wreck than the driver took to make a new shaft. 

The messenger and, when he awoke, the 
driver, behaved as my hosts. The messenger 
came from Lody, near Minsk; he had a wife 
and seven children, and he belonged to the 
Army Service Corps. He pointed to his shoul- 
der straps, and said, "There you are !" I asked 
why he wore civilian trousers: he said, "I 
have never worn army trousers except in Au- 
gust." Of Lody he said, "It's peaceful now, 
but there's nothing to drink, so folks are ir- 



264 COLOURS OF WAR 

ritable." He showed me the blue form, and I 
saw that he wrote really well. The driver was 
annoyed. He turned and said, "Yes, he can 
write and he can talk; I am a dark man, but 
I can write my name." At a village half-way 
to Groizy the messenger fished from his saddle- 
bags grey bread, broke it, and offered me half. 
Again the driver was annoyed. He hesitated 
and pulled some grey bread from a sack. He 
offered me half, and seemed pleased when I 
declined. 

The messenger told me that the transport 
men do not want the war to end. They earn 
good wages. They drive day and night, they 
never go home, hear nothing of wives and chil- 
dren, never change their clothes, never go to 
bed. When the endless train winds into War- 
saw, or Siedlec, or Brest-Litovsk, it spreads 
into a square, rests, loads, and starts again. 
The drivers are under military law, but most 
are civilians, especially the fellows in the lamb- 
skin caps: these were Poles. "There are 
seventy thousand transport drivers earning 
good money." "How many drivers alto- 
gether?" "Maybe a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand, maybe more. That is seventy thousand 
civilians and fifty thousand soldiers. The rest 
don't count." "Why don't they count?" 



TRANSPORT Z§5 

"They are White Russians. They live round 
Pinsk in the bog, and get skin-diseases from 
eating spoiled grain." 

All night the transport went. The messenger 
covered me with a sheepskin, but it was too 
cold to sleep. We passed the half -burnt village 
of Lasy. Next day we reached Warsaw by the 
Grojec alley, which is unwashed like Bjalobr- 
shegi. The messenger refused to take money, 
saying, "It's Crown work." The driver took 
a rouble, and looked at the messenger derisively, 
as much as to say that Crown work is just the 
work for which roubles are meant. 



CHAPTER XII 
SOLDIERS 

OUTSIDE Warsaw, at Brwinow, an elderly 
man in mixed uniform, plainly a scholar, 
wrote from the dictation of illiterates 
letters to certain Mariyas and Lukeriyas. The 
illiterates served in a new unit. The letter- 
writer wrote with zeal and anger, ignoring in- 
structions of the soldiers, who asked, "Have 
you put in the stops ?" but not, "Have you put 
in the sense?" The scene recalled Repin's 
Zaporog Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Sultan. 
The letter- writer was newly chosen. Before 
him, scamps haunted the front, and wrote 
letters of affection and litigation. The scamps 
asked three kopecks for work worth two; they 
mixed things up — ladies awaiting avowals 
of love received threats that unless they paid 
. . . Then came a Pole, who spoke Russian. 
He charged little, and forgot no stops; his 
weakness was that he could not write. The 
soldiers dictated, "Genuflections to Mariya 
Semionovna, genuflections to Lukeriya Pe- 
trovna; and have you repaired the shed? ..." 

266 



SOLDIERS 267 

and the Pole, with a shorthand writer's impas- 
sivity, scratched noughts, pothooks, crosses, 
hangers, and oghams. In this way he ad- 
dressed the envelopes. After gaining praise 
by neat work, he wrote for a man who could 
read. The man seized the unfinished letter, 
and bawled: "The Pole's a fraud! He can't 
write Russian! He's writing in Polish!" The 
fraud was replaced by an honest, cross man, 
who wrote at least half of what was said, and 
to impress wives in the cabins of Sashina added 
rhetoric of his own. 

Wounded men dictate their letters to nurses. 
Men letter-writers, mostly unpaid, write for 
soldiers in camp. Letters dictated are more 
eloquent and less original than the soldiers' 
own. The letter-writer may concoct adventures, 
lending one adventure to two or three men. 
In newspapers I found the same letter with dif- 
ferent signatures, describing adventures which 
could hardly have happened twice. In War- 
saw, M. Arsenieff showed me letters with his- 
tories of fights. Some were newspaper echoes; 
some told of real things in plain words. There 
were no politics. I saw Berlin given as "Vas- 
kingrad," an analogue of Petrograd, meaning, 
"Bad Willy's Town"; and I read this: "A 
reserve man of our battalion boasted that no 



268 COLOURS OF WAR 

bullet would kill him. He got a stomach wound. 
He rose from his bed, and said, 'It's not a 
bullet, is it, doctor?' 'No,' said the doctor, 
'a shell splinter.' 'Then I was right,' said the 
reserve man, and died." Soldiers seldom use 
images. The Austrians, one told me, were 
"like stones skimming over the surface of 
water." He meant that the enemy was bravest 
when he charged. "When they ceased to 
move, they dropped like stones." As reason 
for not following up a success, I heard, "We 
all had wounded legs." The soldiers, this 
meant, were tired. 

The education of soldiers of the same social 
class is not on the same level, and there are 
many classes. At Schtchepetowo railway sta- 
tion, a private soldier, his face concealed by 
bandages, a tube for breathing in his mouth, 
stood with a well-dressed young woman. He 
was the lady's brother; he had volunteered 
not for patriotism, but because he held that 
no man had the right to be happier or more 
wretched than other men. The soldiers of the 
active army, in peace time over a million, are 
nearly all literate. These are young men. 
Schooling has spread; and the first months' 
service of illiterates are spent in battalion 
schools. Reservists are worse schooled than 



SOLDIERS 269 

active men. There are soldiers who learned 
to read without help. The reading passion is 
strong. Soldiers rush into railway carriages, 
and beg for "gazettes." Many read like the 
coachman in Dead Souls, for the mechanical 
joy of reading; they pore over papers out of 
date; more intelligent men read aloud, and 
discuss the news; the most intelligent tear 
the papers into strips, twist funnels for tobacco, 
and smoke. 

The moral and mental states of soldiers are 
not conditioned by learning. The "dark" sol- 
diers are as good as the "conscious," and as in- 
telligent in different ways. The dark soldier 
puts childish notions in childish, coloured words; 
he is himself. The conscious factory-hand 
soldier has notions which, being in grown-up 
speech, sound grown-up, but are often inane. 
Neither knows much of war; but the dark 
soldier knows more, as he thinks the aim of 
war is to satisfy needs. To the dark soldier 
the aim of the war is to take German land, 
because in his commune no man has more than 
five acres; the conscious soldier, fed on some 
daily Viedomosti, says that the aim of the war 
is to put the Kaiser in a cage. 

The view of battle is unromantic and Ho- 
meric. An army fights in order to win; an in- 



270 COLOURS OF WAR 

dividual fights in order to kill and to escape 
being killed. Tempered by compassion and the 
will to help, is the notion that a wounded man 
is inferior. He has been bested by the foe. A 
fight with rifles against unseen foes is as much 
a test of fitness as a duel with swords. Every 
soldier ought to have a chance. At Pavlovsk 
I heard a wounded man telling how he had 
been hit before going into battle. "Why did 
they hit me, an innocent man, before I killed 
their men? Why? Why?" A wounded man 
who had been through the Bsura battles praised 
a certain Matvei for escaping by agility a shell 
which wounded many. Matvei, he said, was 
a good soldier; and he condemned himself and 
the men who were killed. He could not grasp 
the notion of laying down life for the Father- 
land; when told that the killed men died 
gloriously, he said, "If we had ducked in time 
we might have killed ten Germans apiece." 
With some these notions are strengthened by 
the belief that a wound means death. The 
soldiers say, "First time you get drob (gun- 
shot — a slight wound) ; second time you get 
grob (a coffin)." Slight wounds are not re- 
ported to kinsfolk. The village, the soldier 
knows, will say, "Fancy a tall lad like Grishka 
being fooled by a German!" 



SOLDIERS 271 

The soldiers believe that brave men come off 
best. Brave men in civil life make brave sol- 
diers. I found soldiers running about the plat- 
form of Vilna station with kettles of boiling 
water, while they argued, "Must the third- 
class buffet attendant give boiling water gratis? " 
Months before, I learned, a third-class atten- 
dant refused; to convince him a soldier quoted 
paragraph — of the regulations. This was a 
brave man; he went unscathed through many 
fights while his comrades perished. The sol- 
diers developed this thesis: there are two kinds 
of brave men; brave men who never get killed, 
and brave men invulnerable in battle who die 
of violence outside battle. The men spoke of 
bullets that changed their paths; kettles that 
saved life by taking bullets down their spouts; 
and shells deflected by cigarettes. In hospital 
was a soldier whose adventures surpassed in- 
vention. At Tannenberg a bullet pierced his 
cap; he escaped by a chance on the East Prus- 
sian frontier; of a patrol surprised by the 
enemy he alone returned. His fate came where 
there was no enemy. On the way to camp 
with firewood he fell to a sentry's bullet. 

Soldiers believe in selection by missiles. 
"While we were marching," they told me, "a 
shell struck the head of the man in the first 



272 COLOURS OF WAR 

rank; it rose and spared the man behind; then 
it fell and killed the third man; and so on." 
"The killed men may have been taller than the 
spared men." "They were taller. But we saw 
the shell dip and rise. If the spared men were 
meant to be killed, they would have been tall." 
I walked with a trail of lightly wounded on a 
road near Mstchonow. They told me in soft 
South-Russian with Roumanian idioms, that 
every ninth man on the roll of their battalion 
was dead: all the ninth men, doomed to death, 
were dead, so the battalion would escape fur- 
ther loss. "Somebody else is now ninth man," 
I said, "there will always be ninth men until 
only eight are left." They argued. These sol- 
diers spoke of the war as The Robbery. They 
asked, "When will The Robbery end?" I 
took them for Pacifists. Later I learned that 
the Slav razboi, which means highway robbery, 
is used by the Bessarabians in the sense "War." 
It is strange that the posterity of Trajan's 
Colonists have no word of their own. Their 
choice shows the irony of Latin minds. 

Between the soldiers and the men who make 
war and profit by war there is a moral opposi- 
tion. Any man who talks to the soldiers without 
seeing that must be without compassion and im- 
agination. The soldiers do not think as think 



SOLDIERS 273 

the men who make wars: they are not hunters 
of sensation; few of them care more for the 
frontiers of Empires than for the landmarks in 
their own communes; and they are not guilty 
of the crooked domestic bookkeeping which 
wars generously erase. Not being philosophers, 
they do not know that war is no worse than 
other evils of life. They want happiness, and 
have no notion of happiness except freedom 
from the pain, hunger, and cold which The 
Robbery brings. There is little enthusiasm; 
the more Russian the unit, the less enthusiasm 
there is. Polish soldiers, though they hate 
Russia, and resent the compulsion to fight 
brother Poles, are more militant by nature than 
the Black Earth moujiks. In Cossacks lives 
the tradition of war as a trade and a sport. 
Disappointment was great, for in the static 
campaign in Poland cavalry was little used, the 
Cossacks least. Austrian Hussars fought as in- 
fantry. In a camp near Warsaw, well out of 
the war area, I heard Cossacks lament. They 
had been at Mlava in North Poland, and ex- 
pected to go to East Prussia. Then came the 
winter battle of Masuria, and the expulsion from 
Prussia of the fragments of the Tenth Army. 
After changing places, the Cossacks found them- 
selves far from the war, with no hope of getting 



274 COLOURS OF WAR 

near. They came from the Don with the notion 
that war is a thing of charges and booty. The 
officers disliked inaction. The men reasoned 
that strategical interests should give way to 
Cossack tradition. "It is a pity the Germans 
don't have a success." "Why ? " "They would 
then come far into Russia, and the Cossacks 
would be allowed to fight." For warlike ar- 
dour, the Circassians and the Moslems of Asia 
match the Cossacks. Generalisations are un- 
sound; there are too many races, and no way 
of learning what they think. Many speak no 
Russian except tak totchno, the army expression 
of assent — "We are delighted to do our best," 
and "We are delighted to remain!" In these 
phrases is a homely sound; they express the 
fraternal Russian spirit. But they are not 
spontaneous. The Statute of Internal Service 
says what soldiers must answer to every re- 
mark. 

The soldiers value themselves high. They 
behave, especially the reservists, as solid fathers, 
whose lives have a moral and economic worth; 
who, apart from the pain to themselves of death, 
measure the pain to others. They reason with- 
out shame that it would be a bad thing if they 
were killed, because son Vanka is young, because 
brother Luka, known to the village as Feather- 



SOLDIERS 275 

head, cannot manage a farm. Letters written 
after battle show joy at escape. Braggarts are 
ridiculed as "trench chickens." Great events 
are taken with calm. On an autumn evening, a 
wounded soldier came into an inn in Petrograd 
where I sat, talking to workmen. An old peas- 
ant asked, "Where do you come from, worthy 
man?" The soldier said, "From Germany, 
from Germany, grandfather." Perhaps he had 
seen the cataclysm of Tannenberg; but he would 
say no more. 

In death are shown resignation or animal 
indifference: very seldom there is fear. I saw, 
borne on a stretcher, a wounded man who shook 
nerves by exclaiming, "Don't let me die!" 
He was a middle-aged man, with the face of a 
Privy Councillor, and the piping, "Don't let me 
die !" was incongruous, even absurd, for he was 
as good as dead. The soldiers reason simply 
about death. They have no notion of immor- 
tality; or they have mechanical notions: men 
in the grave are so lively that they spoil the 
grass overhead; Christian corpses object to 
corpses of Jews; and so on. On the terraced 
trenches at Tarnobrzeg I heard men talk of 
death. There was a cross with the words, Im 
Kriege Feind ; im Tode vereint — the Austrians 
put this up everywhere, and the Germans put 



276 COLOURS OF WAR 

Ruht sanft or Auf Widersehen. The soldiers 
knew that friends and foes were buried together; 
and they asked whether the Austrians were 
Catholics or Uniates, and whether they edged 
away from the Orthodox dead. There was 
nothing to prevent the dead moving when the 
ground was soft with snow-water. Men could 
live anywhere. "They breathe in the air, and 
they swim in the pond." "And in the fire, 
Wiseacre?" "If they get into the fire, then let 
them get out." The soldier called Wiseacre 
spoke bitterly of his wound; he had lost three 
fingers of the right hand, and he asked, "What 
good am I as a workman ? " I heard from others 
this groping question as to the future; it was 
more painful than "Don't let me die!" — it 
strengthened my belief that it is not the pain of 
death, but a fair valuation of themselves as 
husbands and workers which makes the soldiers 
take care. 

This feeling does not spoil them for battle. 
Little is heard of shirkers and voluntary sur- 
renders; the mass surrenders do not reflect the 
soldiers' wills. Deserters are few, and their ends 
are tragic. A sick soldier, Orthodox, but of 
Polish blood, came for rest to Bielostock; nursed 
by a red-cheeked, beetle-browed Polish girl, he 
fell in love; a priest married them; the soldier, 



SOLDIERS 277 

disguised as a pedlar, fled with his bride to 
Kovno. He was caught, and court-martialled; 
the bride, told that she too might be shot, was 
ordered to leave Poland; in the night, she rushed 
at a sentry, knowing that he would shoot. There 
are some "self -shooters" (samostrieltsi) . A let- 
ter says that in a trench fight a soldier held his 
hand before an Austrian rifle, expecting a bullet. 
The explosion took off the hand : the self -shooter 
was bandaged, tried, and shot. 

Of strategy and tactics the soldiers know 
little. They trust in the bayonet, and, like sol- 
diers of all armies, believe that the enemy dreads 
it. They understand holding trenches and mow- 
ing attackers down. They have little sense of 
orientation. If they repulse the attack, it is 
the same whether they face east or west; when 
well led, they fight as well in retreat as in ad- 
vance; they keep their heads, so long as the 
enemy is seen only on one side — in big battles 
that is always so. The soldier wants a visible 
objective; with a town in front to be attacked, 
or a town behind him, he is best. In other re- 
spects — with the exception that he does not 
report his triumphs in advance — he thinks 
much as a British Minister. He believes that 
war needs no preparation or applied genius; 
that it is a thing of impromptus and interven- 



278 COLOURS OF WAR 

tions; that luck must turn; that if you only 
wait, something will get you out of a hole. 

This spirit governs the soldiers' reasoning on 
victory and defeat. No pride is felt in success 
achieved by courage and skill — these are 
human virtues: the intervention of Providence 
or chance is the only right cause of pride. The 
story that General Schwartz's horse saved Ivan- 
gorod went round the army; jealous soldiers 
adapt it to other victories. General Schwartz 
commanded the fortress during the attack of 
October. His soldiers were in expectant mood, 
for they had seen on a white horse the ghost 
of General Michael Skobeleff. Schwartz had a 
white horse, for war use coloured green. On 
battle days it rained and blew. The general 
rode a long way in a straight line; the rain 
washed white the windward side of the horse; 
the leeward side remained green. The general 
rode to a point where his men wavered. A 
shell burst; the horse shied; the soldiers saw 
the green side, then the white. They were sure 
that this was Skobeleff; he had not had time to 
finish colouring his horse. "They cheered; they 
charged, and the Swabians ran." 

The mystical view — the view that rational 
thinking and consequent action have little value 
against accidents — is pushed far; soldiers re- 



SOLDIERS 279 

ject generalship, and take joy in showing how 
simplicity outwits it. This is the tenet of 
peasant Nihilism — that wisdom, wealth, and 
strength are helpless things against the Chris- 
tian arcana hidden in the spirits of the weak. 
A little child shall lead. Primitive stratagems, 
or merely unconscious follies, give falls to the 
pride of the brain. Feodor the Fool beats Ger- 
man generals. The Fool was an intellectual 
blank; it was easier for Heaven to write genial 
things in him than on brains thick with the 
stupidities of Staff colleges. The Fool sum- 
moned the captured general, and lectured him 
on the folly of trying to thwart God with maps 
and bent pins stuck into them. Maps were use- 
less; the pins might be sent to the general's wife. 
Another Fool, a certain Bogatoff, fooled another 
German. Bogatoff was such a fool that he lost 
his way. He changed into peasant clothes. He 
was captured, and brought before a general. 

A big man, the general, covered with stars, like a French- 
man, like a sort of Napoleon. He asked Bogatoff to show 
the road through the marsh. Bogatoff showed. The gen- 
eral called him a blockhead, and said, "The road could 
not be there." "It is," said Bogatoff. "We all know it, 
I helped to make it. There was another road, but it's 
destroyed." 

Bogatoff guided the Germans along the wrong track; and 
they fell into the marsh. "Ours" opened fire. "What's 
that?" asked the general. "It's my workmen breaking 



280 COLOURS OF WAR 

stones," said Bogatoff. The Germans went on; their army 
fell into the marsh; and all were killed. The Tsar gave 
Bogatoff the general's decorations; and now it is Bogatoff 
who shines like a Frenchman, like a sort of Napoleon. 

Beyond the day's comforts and discomforts, 
the soldiers take interest in family matters, land, 
moral problems, and religion. They speak more 
of children than of wives, praise schooling and 
schoolmasters, and complain of village thieves. 
When they speak together, they call their chil- 
dren Vanka, Varka, Stiopka, with the ha end- 
ing, — derogatory, like the Italian accio; if an 
Intelligent listens, they say, with respect, Ivan, 
Varvara, Stepan. I asked a soldier why he did 
this. He got red. He told me that when he 
drove away from home in Penza, he wondered 
what would become of his family, and cried; 
and his children ran after him, jeering, "Father's 
afraid he'll be killed." 

The soldiers have mixed notions of morals, 
they seldom impute hypocrisy; they hold that 
church-going thieves and drunkards are sincere, 
only deep piety could lead a thief to church — it 
is no trouble for a good man to pray. Religion 
is not morals, but exaltation — the ecstatic 
Suvoroff, 

"Who loved blood as an alderman loves marrow." 
read the lessons in Kontchansk church. With 



SOLDIERS 281 

morals goes deportment. The soldiers are de- 
corous; they greet one another politely, with- 
out familiarity. I heard soldiers praising the 
virtues, solidity and gravity. A corporal told 
how two men who streaked their cheeks with 
ochre were killed. They were killed because 
they lacked gravity. Gravity, he said, is pass- 
ing from the world. In the old days men were 
grave. They wore long coats, and talked seri- 
ously in low voices; nowadays men wear short 
jackets — even gentlemen wear short jackets — 
and there is no dignity left. "We wear over- 
coats in winter: when we take them off, what 
are we ? Spiders. Short jackets are the cause 
of the war." He condemned the clothes of 
France and England, and condemned the Ger- 
mans for flooding Russia with "German cloth- 
ing:" This meant European clothing. A sol- 
dier objected, "Men can be serious in any kind 
of coat. Only popes need long coats." 

Of the land question I heard much. There 
were mysterious lawsuits lasting for years; 
trouble with meddlesome commissaries, timber 
wars, and the immemorial question, individual 
tenure or communal? Hard, responsible men, 
who embody gravity in long coats, want individ- 
ual ownership as fostered by the Law of 1906; 
mystics, weaklings, the younger idealogues — 



282 COLOURS OF WAR 

men who pit the Fool Feodor against Hinden- 
burg — stand for ownership in common. You 
see their hankering after equality in need. The 
sharper men of both classes condemn the pre- 
vailing perversion of land reform for political 
aims. I heard soldiers talking of a Kharkoff 
man who profited more than is usual from the 
law. He was killed. "The Government is 
guilty," said the soldier. "Of what? Killing 
the man, or letting him grab the land?" The 
soldier was not clear. 

The army has no art except song. M. Ar- 
senieff looked for drawings; finding none, he 
ordered them. The drawings were behind the 
German soldier art, which I saw a year ago on 
reservists' trains; the profiles had almond eyes: 
one drawing had humour; it showed the Kaiser 
with moustaches turned up, and Dundreary 
whiskers turned up in the same way. The like- 
ness was bad. Of army theatricals the brave 
General Kondratenko was a supporter. I bought 
in Radom a faded pink book, A Collection of 
Plays for Soldiers. In it were a play Don't Dig 
Pitfalls; You'll Fall in Yourself, with heroes 
called Glutton and Drink-it-Up; a play on the 
Slav Faust, Pan Tvardowski; and The Tsaritsa's 
Slippers, dramatised from Gogol. Russian voices 
are better than German, and in the songs there 



SOLDIERS 283 

is more poetry, but the singing is disorderly. 
There is a war-song about the Vistula, which re- 
calls our own; the burden is the long way to the 
Vistula; and there is doggerel with the refrain, 
"Bullets fly. ..." — Pulyi letayut — which says 
that, 

"The rifle bullets go through you like pins; 
Bullets of shrapnel shells shatter your shins"; . . . 

this need not worry you, as most bullets wound 
only the wind. I have heard German soldiers 
singing the same thing: 

"Die Mushetenkugel macht ein kleines Loch, 
Die Kanonenkugel ein weit grosseres noch. 
Die Kugeln sind alle von Eisen und Blei, 
Und manche Kugel geht bei manchem vorbei." 

To war-songs most soldiers prefer Down by 
Mother Volga, the Pedlar's Song of Nekrassoff, 
and new songs about "red girls," "black eyes," 
and village Lovelaces — "accursed curly Van- 
kas," whose victims' husbands jump down wells. 
I found a soldier who could sing, "High, high is 
the sun under heaven; deep, deep is the ocean 
sea," the most poetical beginning in the me- 
diaeval epos. He had learned it from a school- 
master, and sang badly. Cossacks gave me a 
narrative poem with an old Russian plot, and a 
moral from the tale of Polycrates. The hero, 



284 COLOURS OF WAR 

"the Cossack" without a name, fell in love with 
a "red [beautiful] maid," a Kirghiz sultan's 
child. The Cossack converted and married the 
infidel maid, and she bore him children. The 
Cossack was too happy; he feared that content- 
ment was extinguishing his spirit, and he blinded 
his wife's blue eyes, and cast her unto the Ural. 
In history, Stenka Razin, the Volga freebooter, 
loved with passion an abducted Persian princess. 
In payment to the river that gave him power 
and wealth, he sacrificed her, as "the Cossack" 
sacrificed the "red maid." Songs like this, not 
songs of battle, are sung. In the Bsura trenches, 
concertinas were played; the Germans heard, 
and to the music of Volga bargee chanties sang 
"The Two Comrades" and other songs of war. 
The epic spirit lives. Peasant soldiers and 
Cossacks rhyme about present deeds. The war 
with Japan gave plenty of verse, uninspired, 
beginning: 

"Adjutant-General Grippenberg, 
One of our best leaders . . ." 

From a Cossack officer I got a new composition 
which told with more poetry how a ford in Gali- 
cia was found: 

The Russian leaders asked, "Where is the ford, where 
is the ford of the San?" No one answered. The Rus- 
sians delayed till morning the crossing. 



SOLDIERS 285 

At night, In the midnight, the Cossack Yegor Yegoroff 
rose. He dreamed. He saw before him not the tedious 
San, but the glorious, quiet Don. He knew the Don by a 
willow, a broken willow whence he had cast stones in the 
glorious, quiet Don; he knew that one verst lower was a 
ford. 

The Cossack set a Christian cross, an Orthodox cross, 
on the bank, and marked the ford. 

At dawn the Russians sought a ford in the tedious San. 
The Cossack rode to the Christian cross, and shouted, 
"This is not the San, but the glorious, quiet Don. I 
know the ford of the Don. It is near the broken willow." 

The lieutenant said, "Be still!" 

"This is the ford; I know the ford." 

"Be still!" 

The Cossack thrust his lance through a sheep that was 
being dressed for dinner; thrust it far; half the lance was 
stained with blood. He took the bloody lance, and cast 
it into the middle of the San, exclaiming, "This is the 
glorious, quiet Don, and here is the ford!" The lance 
stuck upright; the blood was not covered. 

The lieutenant saw that the San was indeed shallow. 
There the Russians crossed. 



The soldiers' relation to enemies is a reproach 
to the bad politicians and bad writers who show 
in safe arm-chairs so much courage and intol- 
erance. Men who have really suffered, who have 
exchanged their homes for wounds and hunger, 
do not talk of vengeance. If a soldier wrongs a 
prisoner or a civilian, he may repent it next day; 
reasoned plans of wrong-doing are never his. 
The worst thoughts of soldiers are above the 
daily talk of arm-chair heroes; and the best 



286 COLOURS OF WAR 

things have more truth and poetry than all 
the arm-chair rhetoric of the year. Newspapers 
printed a soldier's letter, asking for a concer- 
tina, a loud one so that the Austrians might hear. 
A soldier told me the war would end in a month. 
Expecting an arm-chair tale of marches on Ber- 
lin, I asked, "Why ? " He said that the enemy's 
soldiers were great sinners; but suppose they 
should lay down their arms and ask for forgive- 
ness? Queerer things have happened. Asked, 
"What put that in your head?" he laughed 
mysteriously and cunningly, as much as to say, 
"That is above your understanding." He had 
seen two prisoners brought in; they were young 
men, and both were crying. Why were they 
crying? No one offended them. They were 
crying because they were sorry. If some were 
sorry, why shouldn't all be ? Who knows what 
is in any heart? The vision of Hindenburg's 
millions, all with reversed helmets as lachrymal 
urns, coming for pardon seemed to me matter 
for laughter; and I laughed. The soldier 
looked hurt. He looked as if he had never read 
speeches; he also looked sharp and bitter, as if 
he wanted to say, "Where did you get your 
plans for ending the war; and do you really 
think they're more likely than mine ?" 



CHAPTER XIII 
ULTIMA RATIO 

WITH the Germans on the Bsura, thirty 
miles west, Warsaw was more tranquil 
than in October when they held a sub- 
urb. Beyond the forts, guns were heard; west 
winds brought the noise to the Election Field at 
Kolo; some heard the noise at night in the city 
limits. The dirt and the levity remained. The 
Russians, soldiers or nurses, were at work. The 
Poles talked of trips to hear the gun-roar, of 
fancy-dress balls with rouged Thick Berthas 
and Zeppelins. The nephew of a ruling official 
went to see things; he rode through a gap in 
the lines some way south, and was caught by 
Germans. Seeing he was not a spy, but an 
amateur of battle — a Schlachtenbummeler — 
they sent him back. There were other ama- 
teurs — rich, idle men who came in disguises; 
some as Red Cross workers who did no work; 
some as writers for newspapers that do not pay; 
some distributing cigarettes. They talked about 
supreme battlefield thrills and expressions on 

287 



288 COLOURS OF WAR 

dead men's faces. The house of the Countess 

teemed with heroes, who were fed, and 

asked if they hated the Germans . . . how it feels 
to drive your bayonet . . . ? The Countess spir- 
ited home a man who had lost fingers, a good- 
looking, slow man, with conceit based on vic- 
tory in battle with cooks. "Were you badly 
frightened?" the Countess asked, "when the 
enemy came in sight." "No," said the soldier, 
and blushed. "I knew you meant to treat me 
only to tea." 

The right wing of our army retired to the 
Bsura after the defeat of Wlozlawsk in Novem- 
ber, and before Christmas, on the Bsura, Rawka, 
and Nida began an immobile campaign. Spirits 
were good, if not radiant as the Third Army's 
were. Two months' fighting made clear that 
the Bsura line could be held; if it were forced, a 
field defence farther east would prolong our re- 
sistance. Would the town be held as a fortress if 
the field defence failed ? No one knew whether 
the nineteen forts and the tete de pont at the 
railway bridge were armed and in repair. The 
forts were too near to save the town from bom- 
bardment; they would need a big garrison; with 
army and refugees, there would be a million 
mouths to feed. The citizens knew little of 
these things. They pointed to the unarmed 



ULTIMA RATIO 289 

Citadel on the outskirts, built by Nicholes the 
First to punish the rebels of 1830, as their pal- 
ladium; and the amateurs of battle discussed 
the Citadel's threat to Field-Marshal Hinden- 
burg. 

There were no panics. I saw no aircraft or 
bombs until after my return from Galicia; but 
I heard of both. In Christmas week, four aero- 
planes came together; and a few men were 
killed. Down fluttered leaflets requesting peo- 
ple to stay indoors at certain hours. Guns in 
Praga shelled the aeroplanes with shrapnel. A 
month later there were four days of air raids. 
A Taube was brought down by the Okecie fort. 
A hotel roof was broken. In February aircraft 
bombarded the forts. On the day I returned 
from Galicia, an aeroplane sailed over the Stare 
Miasto, and disappeared, leaving a trail of 
broken roofs, and a booklet on Freedom. The 
bombs hurt no one; the booklet on Freedom 
struck a jeweller who was looking out of a win- 
dow. The impact so startled him that he fell and 
broke his neck. The Poles joked on the deadli- 
ness of German fiction. In hospital there were 
many air-bomb victims. In the Cafe Bristol, 
amateurs of battle described their wounds. 

In the middle of February, in Left- Vistula 
Poland the snow melted. Snow held in ravines. 



290 COLOURS OF WAR 

On the right bank the snow was thin; in Ma- 
suria, a hundred miles north, the fragments of 
Sievers' Tenth Army struggled knee-deep, and 
Germans in sledges pursued. The winter, se- 
vere in the Carpathians, was mild here. The 
Vistula tributaries which formed our defence 
line were long frozen; this did not help the Ger- 
mans, who had forced the Rawka when it was 
open, and could not force all of the Bsura when 
it was frozen. As rivers, the Bsura and Rawka 
did not count much. They were narrow, but 
the banks had natural strength, and they were 
fortified well. 

From the Vistula confluence to Sokatchew, 
due west of Warsaw on the Kalisch Railway, the 
Bsura banks are high and wooded. Near the 
confluence, the Russians held the right bank. 
Behind, with hamlets scattered, are marshes 
impassable in thaw. South of Sokatchew there 
is less wood. Here the Bsura ceased to be the 
defence line. The Germans had got across; 
they were fighting on the Sucha, one of three 
small streams which run parallel. Borzymow, 
a scene of fighting early in February, is here. 
The Upper Sucha runs through forest. From 
Bolimow south to Rawa, the Rawka was the 
dividing line. Rawa on the right bank was held 
by Germans. In places, the Russian lines over- 



ULTIMA RATIO 291 

looked the German; in the slopes were terraces 
of trenches, and earth-sacks in rows. This was 
as on the Dunajec. Mining war went on. 
Both sides had difficulty in gaining ground; 
on the balance the enemy gained. The Ger- 
mans had reserve field fortifications which 
stretched to the marshes of Lowitsch. They 
turned Kolo, on the Warthe, into a permanent 
fort. 

The German positions were well masked. 
Sometimes it is useless to mask trenches from 
airmen. The straight line reveals them. An 
airman showed me photographs, taken at mod- 
erate height, of what seemed to be unpeopled, 
scrub-covered land. There was no sign of war. 
The photographs were of a Bsura position, held 
by intrenched men, which bristled with guns. 
The trenches were roofed, the roofs were covered 
with branches and pine-saplings, and, to break 
the line, bushes were planted in irregular groups. 
Further south, the Germans scraped a streak of 
land, laid down some uniforms, and presented 
it to airman as a trench. Where snow lay, land 
ribbons were cleared, and the dark lines looked 
like trenches. Sometimes the tricks deceived 
our airmen; sometimes our tricks, which may 
not be described, deceived theirs. Both sides 
photographed without ceasing. A German air- 



292 COLOURS OF WAR 

man and his mechanic had to descend in the 
marshes. They told with guffaws how the peas- 
ants, fearing the paper bird's flight, sawed off 
a wing. 

The German offensive lost in vigour, and 
gained in cleverness. After the attacks of Janu- 
ary, men were spared, and cheap advantages 
sought; the defence was to be worn out by ruses, 
by changes of method, by night attacks seldom 
carried through. Movements of troops were 
screened with smoke curtains, usually made 
with straw. Before the battle of Wlozlawsk, a 
veil of smoke hung from the Vistula south for 
thirty miles. The aim was to hide a concentra- 
tion at Thorn. Behind the Rawka were the 
same veils, sometimes hiding important things, 
sometimes hiding nothing, being ruses to divert 
attention from regroupings elsewhere. On the 
morning of the 5th of January the Germans 
sent up smoke. The screen stretched two versts 
along the front; in the south, at right angles, a 
second screen rose. After flying high, our air- 
men returned with the report that the enemy 
was moving infantry and artillery south along 
the line. The plan was not to attack us on the 
south, but to deceive us by a feint of troop move- 
ments, and to attack us in the north. In the 
night, without any screen, reinforcements had 



ULTIMA RATIO 293 

been sent to the north, and now they lay hidden 
in reserve trenches and woods. The Russians 
saw through the plan, and the attack failed. 

The engagement developed into street fighting 
of a kind common during the struggle for War- 
saw. The Germans, with machine guns, oc- 
cupied a ruined village between the lines. The 
Russians resolved to attack. They shelled the 
ruins. The Germans kept quiet, and it was be- 
lieved they had retired. When our men, at- 
tacking, got to the outskirts, the enemy came 
in fives and tens from behind walls. Rein- 
forcements helped the Germans to gain all ex- 
cept the end houses; the Russians cleared 
out, shelled the battered houses, and made a 
new attack. The cottages, one by one, were 
fought for; some were taken and lost. The 
Germans, hidden between walls, checked a gen- 
eral Russian advance. The Russians found a 
heap of sheet-iron. With three or four sheets 
laid together, they made a shield and, sheltering 
behind it, they advanced up the street. The 
Germans made their last stand behind brick 
stoves and chimneys. Every stove and chim- 
ney was defended. In six hours the village was 
cleared. 

In the night attacks stratagems were used. 
Wounded men who streamed into town next day 



294 COLOURS OF WAR 

told me stories. As a rule, night attacks were 
signalled with rockets; next, up went star-shells, 
shedding daylight; when the attack was under 
way searchlights glared, so that our men might 
shoot in blindness and be dazed in bayonet work. 
In January the programme was tried on succes- 
sive nights. The Russians got used to it, and 
though the glare hampered, they fought with 
success. At the end of a week, the signals were 
repeated; the threatened trench was strength- 
ened; and, convinced that the enemy was creep- 
ing beneath the searchlight glare, the defenders' 
men fired low. No Germans were seen. Sim- 
ultaneously to the north, without signals, star- 
shells, or searchlights, the enemy surprised a 
trench. The same night, the ruse was tried 
twenty miles south on the Rawka front; and 
again by Woyrsch's Austrians on the Nida. The 
Staffs had prescribed the same tactics for the 
whole front. 

Protective appliances were used. A shield 
which I tested stopped Browning bullets at close 
range. Against rifle-bullets fired perpendicu- 
larly, the shields were useless. The creeping 
soldiers may have held them aslant, with the 
lower half of the oval ahead; held so, the shields 
might deflect rifle-bullets. On the Sucha front, 
east of the Rawka, were lever machines for de- 



ULTIMA RATIO 295 

stroying entanglements and bridges for barbed 
wire. Our entanglements are made with four 
or six rows of stakes, closely wired. A length 
of mesh-backed canvas, moved in a roll during 
advance, was thrown over the rows of wire. 
The Austrians used a steel-shod plank, ten yards 
long by one yard high, mounted on wheels. 
Infantrymen crept behind it. Hand grenades 
were the only weapon against this. Bullets do 
not penetrate, and artillery cannot be used, for 
fear of hitting friends. 

When creeping towards entanglements the 
Germans pushed sacks of clay, or they rolled 
barrels. An officer from the Sucha told me of 
this. The enemies held trenches at the tops of 
easy slopes. Our men sapped across the valley 
to within fifty yards of the German trench. The 
Germans, using grenades, stopped the advance. 
In the twilight the Russians saw a dozen barrels 
rolling towards them. Behind, it was believed, 
were Germans. Bombs were thrown, some bar- 
rels were shattered or knocked askew, others 
rolled steadily on after the men behind must have 
been killed. When all bombs were thrown, a 
second regiment of barrels advanced against a 
neighbouring trench section; the entanglements 
were cut and the trench was lost. The un- 
broken barrels on the first section began to re- 



296 COLOURS OF WAR 

treat up the slope. Surprise was great. The 
enemy had tied strings to spikes in the barrel 
heads, and sent the barrels down by their own 
weight. 

The trenches in places were as close as they 
are in Flanders. Hand bombs were more use- 
ful than rifles. The soldiers bombed the ene- 
my's trench, cleared him out, and rushed the 
trench with small loss. Rifle fire was confined 
to sharpshooting. At first, the Germans had 
ruses to get our men to expose themselves. 
Shell fragments were tied in handkerchiefs, 
and thrown in front of our trench. When heads 
rose, bullets flew. Rifles in loopholes covered 
every yard of our line. The Russians held up 
Turks' heads, usually canisters wearing German 
helmets. Friendly notes were exchanged. The 
Germans said that in the first week of February 
the Kaiser was on the Rawka and Bsura. It 
was the fiftieth story of the Emperor's visit; 
this time the story was true. Some days later, 
in the crisis of the Winter Battle, he reviewed 
troops in Lyck. Germans found a St. George's 
Cross in trenches which our men had surprised. 
They threw it, stuck in a potato, across the 
intervening yards. The Russians returned a 
New Testament. From the enemy came re- 
quests to surrender. — "The more the better." 



ULTIMA RATIO 297 

The Russians wrote, "Only two can come"; 
they threw this across, and after it they threw 
two bombs. After this wit, peace prevailed; 
there were meetings for mutual improvement 
and protection. 

In the German trenches order was pushed to 
extremes; the Russians looked on the enemy 
as pedantic, and once had reasons for the belief. 
In a Bsura village, our men took fifty prisoners. 
The prisoners were locked in houses, their rifles 
were stored elsewhere. A German counter- 
attack reversed things. The Germans captured 
half a company. Both sides were reinforced; 
there was a street fight; houses blazed; the 
prisoners taken by the Russians escaped, but 
the rifles were kept; the prisoners taken by the 
Germans were released, as their prison caught 
fire. Both sides abandoned the ruins. The 
Russians got back with German rifles, and the 
Germans with Russian. The Germans sent a 
non-commissioned officer to ask for an ex- 
change of arms. The Russians were puzzled; 
there were enough spare rifles taken from the 
killed. The German said he had been sent by 
the battalion armourer, whose books were put 
out of order by an exchange without precedent. 
The armourer knew what to do when rifles re- 
turned without owners, when owners returned 



298 COLOURS OF WAR 

without rifles, even when men came back with 
their own rifles and with the enemy's. But he 
had no precedent for a company of Germans 
returning armed as Russians; "his book-keep- 
ing was upset and his moral equilibrium dis- 
turbed." As there was no need to add the up- 
setting of moral equilibrium to the necessary 
pains of war, the Russians exchanged. I heard 
other parlementaire stories. An officer, the 
survivor of an outpost, found himself at dawn 
near the enemy's lines. Knowing that flight 
would draw bullets, he waved a handkerchief, 
announced that he had been sent by his com- 
mander, and asked for a truce for burying the 
dead. As the dead had been removed, the 
Germans were surprised. A telephone message 
to higher authority brought the reply that a 
truce was not needed, and the parlementaire 
was sent back. 

The stagnation on the Bsura, and the very 
slow advance over the Rawka to the Sucha 
may have been due to trouble in artillery trans- 
port. On the Bsura and Rawka the German 
heavy artillery did not show to such advantage 
as in the East Prussia and Galicia battles, 
fought at the edge of a good railway net. On 
the Bsura the losses from shells were not great. 
In part this was because the bombardment 



ULTIMA RATIO 299 

was seldom intense, in part because the Rus- 
sians developed to extremes their effective bur- 
rowing system. They went farther and far- 
ther underground. A disabled officer made a 
wax model of the Rawka lines, showing the 
high banks, *the trenches, the earth sacks with 
sapped approaches; and, round and in these, 
the pits of exploded shells. Few shells fell in 
the trenches. The shells which fell near over- 
whelmed, knocked down, and blinded men 
with earth, but they killed few. The larger 
shells killed at a distance, by concussion, gas 
pressure, or scorching. Shells which struck 
the sticky Rawka clay made neat holes, sent 
the clay high, and destroyed within a narrow 
sphere. 

The roads from Warsaw to the Bsura and 
Rawka showed that the theatre of main oper- 
ations was elsewhere. The Winter Battle of 
Masuria was being fought. Transport of food 
still went west, but the Red Cross traffic de- 
clined, and ammunition columns rumbled back 
to Warsaw to reinforce the East Prussian front. 
There were few prisoners. I saw Germans at 
Blone, healthy men, belonging to replacement 
troops; they had been in Poland a week. Their 
uniforms and equipment were good; they had 
new eating utensils and tent sections, and 



300 COLOURS OF WAR 

diaries which they kept posted by order. The 
Staff read the diaries. At Rawka a German was 
captured with suspicious ease. His diary read: 

"We cheered the Corps as it started from 

Thorn"; and gave other useful facts. The 
Staff officers read with suspicion; the entries 
were untrue — the surrender, they believed, 
was a ruse. One of the prisoners was wounded, 
a young man, good-looking, with an empty 
schoolboy face. He had been bandaged by 
Russians; his trousers were cut away. He pro- 
duced a bandage packet with a red compress, 
and showed it with pride. My companion, 
a Red Cross official, bound the wound in the 
open air; the sufferer was given a stick: with 
a mild "Danke gehorsamst!" the prisoners 
went. 

Blone is a townlet on the Kalisch railway 
half way to the Bsura. It was a German Staff 
headquarters during the October invasion. Here 
were reserve positions of great strength. The 
Red Cross official who took me to Blone wanted 
to go to Wisitki, which is nearer the Sucha; we 
got part of the way, broke down, and waited. 
A German cylindrical field baking oven, with a 
high funnel — it looked like a primitive loco- 
motive — rusted near the road, and near it 
were graves with crosses, some plain, some 



ULTIMA RATIO 301 

shaped like the Iron Cross. There were soldiers 
everywhere; they cooked or washed; one un- 
der trees ate buckwheat porridge, and pulled 
ropes through holes burnt in a plank. "What 
is that?" "I cannot know; I was bidden do 
it" — an epitome of moujik passivity. This 
answer, though he must have heard it fifty 
times, enraged my companion. He told me 
stories to prove that the peasants are sottish 
and malicious; and then he laughed, and said: 
'What am I saying? They are no worse than 
I am. Everyone abuses the peasants, and heaps 
sins on their backs. If the ropes are not properly 
pulled through the holes, someone will say that 
the soldier is a blockhead, but probably the 
soldier wasn't told what to do. When a chimney 
falls, the builder says, 'What can you do with 
such workmen? When the lawyer loses a 
peasant's case, he says the peasant muddled 
the evidence; when the peasant dies because 
someone neglected him, the doctor says, 'What 
can you do with this people?'" "And when 
you lose battles ?" "In the army, I have never 
heard an officer say, 'What can you do with 
such soldiers?' I don't think anyone says it. 
The moujiks in my province, Kursk, are 
wretched and forsaken; the moujiks in Khar- 
koff are worse. The only place where the 



302 COLOURS OF WAR 

moujik has God's image is Siberia. The Sibe- 
rians are robbers and tyrants." "Is that God's 
image?" "I mean they are men. The Siberian 
wants things; the will is strong; if he could 
persist at anything for fifteen minutes, things 
would go well with him. The moujik of Europe 
doesn't even want. He's a hen." 

We turned away from Wisitki, crossed the 
railway, re-entered Blone, and then drove to- 
wards Sokatchew. I heard of the wonders of 
this battered town, and saw none of them. 
There was a chimney shot three-quarters through 
which stood, and there were other things. We 
did not go in. From Adamowa, beyond the 
river, German 21 cm. mortars were dropping 
shells. Not to do damage, for the sky-line 
showed there was little to damage except 
chimneys and toppling walls. From a point 
south, our men were shelling Adamowa and 
Altanka, an invisible hamlet on the river brink. 
Adamowa, I heard, was visited by the Kaiser 
when he came to Poland; if so, he took risks. 
I saw two shells falling in Sokatchew' s ruins, 
or in front of them; in the west were dull flames 
and smoke. Two wounded men came out of 
the ruins. They said that the doctor who 
dressed their wounds was struck by a shell 
splinter. One limped, the other had lost his 



ULTIMA RATIO 303 

thumb. We put the limping man next the 
chauffeur; as his thumbless comrade looked 
pained, we took him too. He was a squat man, 
with an ill-tempered, humorous face. "What 
will you do when you get to your village?" I 
asked, expecting the mournful, "What good 
am I as a workman?" He laughed, and said, 
"I shall work; I am a clever man." The limp- 
ing man was a shepherd of Kieff, a young man, 
thin and handsome, with a daring expression. 
He was not abashed by my companion, or by 
"the French traveller" — so he called me; he 
talked boldly and openly, looking over his 
shoulder; when I said something he did not 
agree with, he interrupted me. "Your High- 
Well-Born-Ness is wrong. We learned that at 
school." 

At Blone, I met many officers, and M. Arse- 
nieff, who had collected soldier art and letters. 
About soldiers he told me many things, most of 
them here retold. The news of the battle of 
Masuria, he said, had got out piecemeal at 
Petrograd, but it had not shaken faith. The 
officers talked of the paths of shells; I told 
them of the Pilsener's deeds at Tarnow, and 
they said that a Thick Bertha or a Pilsener at 
Adamowa could batter Blone. M. Arsenieff 
offered them wine. Three said nothing; they 



304 COLOURS OF WAR 

looked at one another questioningly as if they 
meant, "I'll drink if you will"; the fourth said 
he would drink nothing till the end of the war. 
When twilight fell we tramped west, watched 
the waggons struggling, and looked towards 
Sokatchew. There was the old glow of burning 
homes, one stage more towards Finis Polonice; 
in the south the glow was pierced by shattered 
roofs. The waggons disappeared; they were 
replaced by Red Cross cars, moving slowly. 
We went back to Blone, took the car, and 
drove towards Sokatchew. The glow of the 
conflagration got bigger. Overhead was an 
arch of black, without starlight. At midnight 
it dawned. Russians or Germans sent up star- 
shells; the air turned blue. A man, who was 
bending over a dead horse, rose and ran. After 
that for an hour we looked at fireworks, and 
heard a few shots. Two star-shells went up at 
once; they shed the brightest daylight; this, 
with the afterglow from the burning villages, 
made the likeness to a white night on the Arctic 
Circle complete. 

Towards the end of the pursuit in Masuria, I 
travelled to Petrograd. Warsaw's levity was 
chastened, not suppressed. Citizens knew of 
the unlucky battle; they heard that the Ger- 
mans were marching on Grodno, and they 



ULTIMA RATIO 305 

imagined the rest. Hindenburg would cut the 
line, and invest Grodno; he would rush the 
Bsura; the Civil Government had left; and the 
Vistula bridges. . . . There were transports of 
troops to meet the danger. The railway was 
blocked. Trains to Petrograd took two or 
three days; on one day no train ran. Travellers 
for Petrograd, fearing they might be cut off, 
went by Moscow. They saved a day. Hoping 
to see the offshoots of the battle, I went direct. 
The sixty miles between Warsaw and the Bug 
were done in twelve hours. There were troop 
trains, and endless chains of trucks, with field 
guns, limbers, and some things bulky packed 
in straw. The trains crawled no faster than 
ours; there was no confusion, but, in the slow- 
ness and congestion, Russia's troubles in war- 
ring were made plain. 

The train was nearly empty. There were 
officers, a few civilians, and four nurses. In 
black dress, and black headdress, was Miss 
Yevreinoff, the playwright's sister; she band- 
aged three hundred men a day on the Nida; 
she could stand it no more, and home she went 
to study International Law under M. Pilenko. 
I met her brother years ago. From Bielostock 
we heard the guns bombarding Ossoviec. At 
Grodno an agitated officer, and a weak, puffy 



306 COLOURS OF WAR 

officer in a sheepskin coat, got in. The agitated 
officer said that German cavalry was outside 
the forts. They might cut the line. He had 
come from the battle, told of the defeat, and 
laughed at the Germans for wasting their shells; 
they spent at least two shrapnel shells for every 
man hurt; but as they fired, may be, a hun- 
dred thousand shells, there were losses. I 
remembered that the Germans had no shells. 
He repeated that they might cut the line; 
pointed to his puffy comrade, and said, "If 
they catch our friend, they'll flay him alive." 
"Sderut s nyevo Icozhu!" I looked at the man 
who was to lose his skin; and saw from the 
hilt of his sword — it had no guard — that he 
was a Cossack. At the words "flay him alive," 
the passengers started. The nurses had been 
talking of Germans and of International Law — 
which blend pictorially; and the new, bright 
war colour made them laugh. 



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